Military Enlisted (Active Duty)
Active duty enlisted service member with BAH, BAS, and SGLI. TSP participant, Tricare coverage, frequent relocation.
F-05 is the active-duty enlisted household: tax-advantaged BAH/BAS that does not appear in gross pay, TSP rather than 401(k), Tricare in place of group health, SCRA protections on consumer credit, and a PCS-move cycle that breaks any state-residency assumption a fintech product makes.
About this archetype
F-05 captures the active-duty enlisted service member in the formation phase: pay grades roughly E-3 to E-6, ages 20–30, with a compensation structure that is materially different from civilian W-2. Basic pay appears on the LES and a W-2 box-1, but Basic Allowance for Housing (BAH) and Basic Allowance for Subsistence (BAS) are excluded from gross income under §134 — together they routinely add $20k–$36k of untaxed value that civilian-style affordability and DTI calculations miss entirely. The retirement vehicle is the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) under the Blended Retirement System, not a 401(k); contribution limits track §402(g) but the L-Funds, Roth-TSP option, and 5% agency-match-with-1%-floor schedule are TSP-specific. Health coverage is Tricare Prime/Select rather than ACA marketplace or employer group, and Servicemembers Group Life Insurance (SGLI) provides $500k of term coverage at a fixed premium — which collapses the standard need-analysis calculation for term-life upsell.
Cash-flow shape is unusual: median gross of $54,926 understates effective compensation by roughly the BAH+BAS untaxed allowance. 9 of 20 (45%) are homeowners — the highest rate in the Formation cohort by a wide margin — driven by VA loan eligibility with no-down-payment, no-PMI underwriting and the structural friction of PCS-move-to-new-state every 2–4 years that pushes the buy-vs-rent calculation toward buying when stationed near a stable installation. Auto loans and mortgages each appear in 9 of 20 households, with credit-card balances on all 20. SCRA (Servicemembers Civil Relief Act) caps pre-service consumer-credit interest rates at 6%, which any lender-facing testing surface needs to honour.
F-05 is distinct from the other formation archetypes because the entire benefits and tax surface is federal-employer-mediated through DFAS and DoD systems rather than a private employer. The household does not shop for health insurance, retirement plans, or basic life coverage in the open market; those are issued by the service. State residency for tax purposes is governed by the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, allowing the service member to maintain a home-of-record state independent of the duty-station state — a frequent source of bugs in fintech onboarding flows that assume state of residence equals state of physical presence.
Defining characteristics
- BAH/BAS allowancesUntaxed housing and subsistence allowances under §134 routinely add $20k–$36k of effective compensation that does not appear in gross income. Mortgage affordability and DTI calculations that ignore BAH systematically underestimate F-05 borrowing capacity.
- TSPThrift Savings Plan with Blended Retirement System matching (5% agency contribution with 1% floor) and L-Funds as the default lifecycle option. The Roth-TSP toggle and combat-zone tax-exempt contribution mechanics are specific testing surfaces.
- SGLI life insuranceServicemembers Group Life Insurance provides $500k of term coverage at a fixed flat premium. Need-analysis tools that recommend additional term coverage at this life stage routinely over-recommend because they ignore SGLI.
- TricareTricare Prime or Select replaces ACA marketplace and employer group plans. HSA eligibility is structurally absent — Tricare is not an HDHP — which breaks default HSA-onboarding flows.
- VA loan eligibleVA loan underwriting (no down payment, no PMI, capped funding fee, residual-income method instead of pure DTI) is the dominant mortgage pathway. 9 of 20 corpus households are homeowners — the highest Formation-cohort rate.
- Frequent PCS movesPermanent-change-of-station orders move the household every 2–4 years. State-residency-for-tax (SCRA-protected home of record) decouples from state-of-physical-presence, breaking address-equals-residency assumptions.
Corpus signature
n = 20 householdsAggregated across the 20 F-05 households in the shipped v3 corpus corpus. Numbers describe the corpus, not population claims.
- 9 of 20 (45%) are homeowners; the remainder rent.
- NJ, FL, NC account for 6 of 20 households — 30% of the corpus.
- Median adult-member age is 24 (range 20–31 across primaries and spouses).
- 3 of 20 (15%) carry one or more dependents.
- Single is the dominant filing status (16 of 20).
Representative household
F-05-seed-19Evelyn is a junior-enlisted F-05 household whose balance sheet illustrates the corpus's most diagnostic pattern: $202k of total liabilities (predominantly a VA-loan mortgage) against $19.9k of liquid assets and an Iowa-based duty station. The mortgage exists because VA underwriting required no down payment and no PMI, so a young service member's first home purchase precedes any meaningful liquid-asset accumulation. The household is behind on both retirement and emergency-fund goals — exactly the scenario VA-lender flows and financial-counselling programs need to surface, where a 21-year-old has been approved for a mortgage that civilian DTI math would have rejected.
Schema fields covered
Every F-05 household ships with — at minimum — these JSON fields populated. The full schema is documented in the data set you purchase.
Who builds against this archetype
Three buyer profiles draw on F-05 most heavily. VA-lender and military-banking platforms use the corpus to validate VA loan underwriting, residual-income calculations, and BAH-inclusive DTI logic. Tax-software teams use F-05 for the §134 untaxed-allowance handling, combat-zone exclusion under §112, SCRA state-of-residence elections, and the moving-expense edge cases that survived TCJA only for active-duty military. Retirement-plan and benefits-administration platforms (TSP partners, financial-counseling programs delivered through Military OneSource and on-base offices) use it to test BRS opt-in, Roth-TSP contribution mechanics, and continuation-pay decision flows at the 12-year service mark.
Testing scenarios this corpus is calibrated for
- 01VA loan affordability and pre-qualification flows that correctly add BAH to qualifying income and use the residual-income underwriting method.
- 02TSP contribution UX with Roth-TSP toggle, agency-match capture, and L-Fund lifecycle defaults.
- 03Tax-prep flows handling §134 untaxed allowance exclusion, §112 combat-zone exclusion, and SCRA-protected state-of-residence elections separate from duty-station state.
- 04PCS-move cost reimbursement and tax-treatment workflows, including the active-duty exception to the §132(g) moving-expense exclusion repeal.
- 05Term-life need-analysis that correctly subtracts SGLI's $500k before recommending supplemental coverage.
- 06SCRA interest-rate-cap implementation on pre-service consumer credit and credit-card products.
Edge cases and what's not in this corpus
F-05 is enlisted only by construction. The officer-track household with materially higher base pay, pension-vesting trajectory, and career-officer planning belongs in MV-02 (Military Officer — Career / Retirement). Service-connected disability and the VA-disability-compensation cash flow that is wholly excluded from federal gross income belong in MV-03 (Disabled Veteran). National Guard and Reserve households with civilian primary employment and intermittent activation are not in this corpus; F-05 is full-time active duty. Recently separated veterans transitioning to civilian employment with GI Bill education benefits are not modelled here either — they live closer to F-01 or F-04 with overlay attributes. Finally, F-05 does not model the senior-NCO E-7-through-E-9 household; those are higher-tenure and overlap MV-02's profile.
Calibration notes
Pay-grade and basic-pay distributions during v3 synthesis referenced the public DoD military pay tables for E-3 through E-6, and BAH was sampled by ZIP-code rate brackets from the published DoD BAH calculator (with-dependents and without-dependents tiers). Homeownership concentration referenced VA Loan Guaranty program statistics. State distribution clusters around large installation states (NJ, FL, NC reflect Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, Eglin/Hurlburt/MacDill, Fort Liberty/Camp Lejeune installations). Per CLAUDE.md §9 the v3 corpus is frozen; these notes describe priors applied at synthesis rather than a reproducible regeneration path.
How this differs from related archetypes
MV-02 is officer-track with materially higher base pay, full pension-vesting expectation, and post-20-year retirement-planning depth. F-05 is enlisted in the first one-to-two enlistments with the BRS-vs-legacy decision still recent.
MV-03 is service-connected disabled with VA disability compensation excluded from gross income under §104. F-05 is active duty without disability rating.
F-01 is the civilian formation peer with a tech employer, RSU grants, and group health. F-05 substitutes BAH/BAS, TSP, Tricare, and SGLI for that civilian benefits stack.
MB-01 is the conventional first-time homebuyer using FHA or conventional financing. F-05 homeowners overwhelmingly use VA loans with different underwriting math (residual income, no PMI, no down payment).
Frequently asked questions
What does the F-05 archetype represent?+
F-05 — Military Enlisted (Active Duty) models the junior-to-mid-enlisted service member, roughly pay grades E-3 to E-6, ages 20–30. The defining benefits structure includes BAH/BAS untaxed allowances, TSP under the Blended Retirement System, Tricare, SGLI, and VA loan eligibility — all federal-employer-mediated rather than private-market.
How does F-05 handle BAH for tax purposes?+
BAH and BAS are excluded from federal gross income under §134, meaning they do not appear in W-2 box 1. The corpus reflects this — gross-income figures shown are basic pay only. Mortgage affordability and DTI calculations need to add back BAH to qualifying income, which is exactly the VA-loan testing surface this archetype is calibrated for.
Why are F-05 homeownership rates higher than other Formation archetypes?+
VA loan underwriting (no down payment, no PMI, residual-income method) plus the structural incentive of stable installation-near assignments enables earlier home purchase. 9 of 20 corpus households are homeowners versus 6 of 30 in F-01 and 3 of 25 in F-02.
Does F-05 include Reserve or National Guard households?+
No — F-05 is full-time active duty only. Reservists and Guard members with civilian primary employment and intermittent activation are not modelled in this corpus.
How does F-05 differ from MV-02 (Military Officer)?+
F-05 is enlisted (E-3 to E-6); MV-02 is officer-track. The distinctions are base-pay magnitude, career-trajectory length, and the depth of pension and post-20-year retirement planning. F-05 households are typically in their first or second enlistment with the BRS-vs-legacy retirement-system decision recently made.
Is the F-05 corpus regenerable?+
No. The shipped v3 F-05 corpus is frozen as of the corpus drift confirmation on 2026-05-09. Sampler improvements land in a future v4 release; the current 20 households are not reproducible from current code.
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