wealthschema/archetypes/mv-02-military-officer-career-retirement
MV-02Military ExpandedAccumulationmoderate tax complexity

Military Officer (Career / Retirement)

Active duty or recently retired military officer with BRS pension, TSP, VA loan, SBP election, and transition to civilian career planning.

MV-02 is the dual-system testing surface where federal benefits (BRS pension, TSP, SBP, VA loan) and civilian compensation overlap during a 20-year-plus officer career and the transition that follows it.

Age Range
30–45
Net Worth
$100k–$1M
Cohort
Military Expanded

About this archetype

MV-02 represents the active-duty or recently retired commissioned officer at the inflection point where the Blended Retirement System pension becomes a quantifiable asset rather than a future entitlement. After the 2018 transition from the legacy High-3 system, BRS adds an automatic 1% TSP contribution and matches up to 5%, alongside a defined-benefit multiplier (2.0% per year of service) and a mid-career continuation pay election at year 12. That structure forces software to handle two interacting retirement accounts simultaneously, with TSP balances that flow through the L-funds or G-fund and a pension whose present value depends on the SBP election made at retirement. Layer in BAH (non-taxable), a VA loan with no down payment requirement and a funding-fee waiver for service-connected disabilities, and Roth TSP contributions made tax-free in a combat zone, and the tax surface diverges sharply from a comparable civilian W-2 household.

Cash flow looks straightforward on the surface — a single primary earner with predictable base pay, BAH, and BAS — but the planning complexity sits in the elections and the transitions. The median household earns $154k combined with $607k net worth, three-quarters own a home (often financed through VA), and 42% carry dependents. The dominant goal is retirement (12 of 12 households) with debt payoff close behind (8 of 12), reflecting the post-deployment paydown pattern where lump-sum BAH and tax-free combat-zone pay accelerate liability reduction.

What distinguishes MV-02 from the rest of the military cohort is not pay grade alone — it is the convergence of a vested federal pension, a sizeable TSP balance, and an imminent or recent move into civilian employment. The corpus skews to households at or near the 20-year point, where the SBP 6.5% premium election is live, civilian job offers introduce 401(k) plans alongside the existing TSP, and state-of-residence choices begin to matter for pension taxation. This is not the enlisted formation profile, and it is not the post-retirement disabled veteran case — it is the officer who has the option to keep going and the option to leave, and whose software needs to model both branches.

Defining characteristics

  • BRS pension
    Defined-benefit multiplier of 2.0% per year of service plus continuation-pay election at year 12; valuation requires a present-value calculation against the household's expected separation date and SBP choice.
  • TSP with matching
    Up to 5% government match plus the automatic 1% contribution. Median investable assets of $410k in the corpus reflect a TSP-anchored balance sheet, often G-fund or L-fund weighted.
  • VA loan financing
    9 of 12 households are homeowners, the majority via VA loan — zero-down, no PMI, and a funding fee that's waived for service-connected disability. Mortgage rules differ from conventional underwriting flows.
  • SBP election
    At retirement the officer elects Survivor Benefit Plan coverage (6.5% of base pension premium), which interacts with life-insurance modeling and spousal-protection scenarios in planning software.
  • BAH and tax-free allowances
    Basic Allowance for Housing is non-taxable; combat-zone pay and BAS are excluded from gross income. AGI-based calculations need to handle the federal exclusion correctly.
  • Civilian transition
    The corpus includes both still-serving and recently retired officers. Post-separation, households layer a civilian 401(k) on top of the existing TSP and may roll legacy balances; this is the dual-plan testing case.

Corpus signature

n = 12 households

Aggregated across the 12 MV-02 households in the shipped v3 corpus corpus. Numbers describe the corpus, not population claims.

Median income
$154k
p25–p75 $133k–$177k
Median net worth
$607k
mean $628k
Liquid net worth
$242k
median
Investable assets
$411k
median
Income distribution
$100k–140k
5
$140k–180k
4
$180k–225k
3
Net-worth distribution
$225k–475k
2
$475k–725k
7
$725k–975k
3
Goals across the corpus
Retirement12 / 12
Debt payoff8 / 12
Education funding5 / 12
Home purchase3 / 12
Emergency fund1 / 12
Liability composition
Credit cards12 / 12
Mortgages9 / 12
Student loans8 / 12
Auto loans8 / 12
  • 9 of 12 (75%) are homeowners; the remainder rent.
  • CA, MA, IN account for 7 of 12 households — 58% of the corpus.
  • Median adult-member age is 42 (range 25–46 across primaries and spouses).
  • 5 of 12 (42%) carry one or more dependents.

Representative household

MV-02-seed-4
Amy W.Married filing jointly·NH Metro Area, NH

Amy and Brian sit near the top of the MV-02 net-worth distribution at $940k, well above the corpus median, with a combined federal-employment income mix (military primary, government spouse) that compounds two pension entitlements rather than one. The diagnostic pattern is the goal-funding split: on track for debt payoff but behind on a $3.5M retirement target and $525k education target — software that doesn't roll the present value of two pensions into the retirement gap will materially overstate the shortfall.

Combined income
$165,119
Net worth
$940,813
Liquid NW
$392,938
Ages
45 / 44
Top goals on this household
Retirement
$3,507,900
Education funding
$525,000
Debt payoff
$5,141

Schema fields covered

Every MV-02 household ships with — at minimum — these JSON fields populated. The full schema is documented in the data set you purchase.

members[].age
income.combined_gross
net_worth.total
filing_status
accounts.taxable.lots[].acquisition_date
accounts.taxable.lots[].cost_basis
accounts.taxable.lots[].unrealized_pnl
taxes.wash_sale_flags

Who builds against this archetype

Wealth-tech platforms serving the military advisor channel use MV-02 to validate BRS-vs-legacy pension valuation, SBP election walkthroughs, and TSP-to-IRA rollover suitability for post-separation households. Tax-software vendors test the BAH exclusion, combat-zone tax exclusion (CZTE), and Roth TSP contributions made during deployment — none of which appear in a standard W-2 fixture. Mortgage origination teams use the homeowner subset to exercise VA loan flows, including the funding-fee waiver logic for service-connected disability and the entitlement-restoration calculation on a second VA purchase.

Testing scenarios this corpus is calibrated for

  • 01BRS pension present-value calculation as a balance-sheet asset, including continuation-pay election at year 12 and the 40% multiplier at 20 years of service.
  • 02TSP-and-401(k) dual-plan rollover scenarios for officers who separate mid-career and take civilian employment with an employer plan.
  • 03SBP coverage modeling at retirement — 6.5% base-pay premium against the spousal-survivor benefit, layered against term-life replacement analyses.
  • 04VA loan affordability and entitlement-restoration calculators, including the second-tier entitlement for officers PCS'ing while retaining a prior VA-financed property.
  • 05Combat-zone tax exclusion handling for deployed Roth TSP contributions, which enter tax-free and grow tax-free — a corner case most civilian retirement engines fail on.
  • 06State-of-residence selection workflows where military domicile (often a no-income-tax state like TX or FL) decouples from physical duty station for pension and TSP-withdrawal taxation.

Edge cases and what's not in this corpus

MV-02 is the officer cohort — enlisted active-duty formation households live in F-05, not here. Service-connected disability with a meaningful VA rating is the MV-03 case, even when the officer also has BRS entitlement; the corpus deliberately excludes severe-rating officers to keep the pension-and-TSP signal clean. Legacy High-3 pension households (retired before 2018 or grandfathered) are present in spirit but the corpus is calibrated to BRS — buyers needing pure High-3 cases should treat MV-02 as a starting point and override the pension formula. Reserve and Guard households with Title 10 activations and a different points-based pension structure are not represented here. Civilian-side federal employees with FERS pensions belong in R-03 (Government/Teacher Pre-Retiree), not MV-02.

Calibration notes

Income bands during v3 synthesis were anchored against DoD pay-table tiers for O-3 through O-6 plus location-typical BAH, with the homeowner share informed by VA loan utilization rates published in the VA Annual Benefits Report. State distribution intentionally over-weights base-adjacent regions (CA, MA, IN reflect concentrations near major installations). The corpus does not model deployment timing, combat-zone exclusion events, or specific SBP election states beyond a single static snapshot — those are dynamic conditions a buyer would layer on top. Per CLAUDE.md §9 the v3 corpus is frozen and not regenerable from current code; calibration here is descriptive of the synthesis intent, not a reproducible specification.

How this differs from related archetypes

Frequently asked questions

What does the MV-02 archetype represent?+

MV-02 — Military Officer (Career/Retirement) represents commissioned officers at or near the 20-year retirement decision point, with Blended Retirement System pension entitlement, an active TSP balance, VA-loan-financed housing in most cases, and an imminent or completed transition to civilian employment.

How does MV-02 differ from F-05 (Military Enlisted)?+

F-05 is enlisted active-duty in the formation phase — typically E-1 through E-6 pay bands, no SBP election yet, no continuation-pay decision, and the retirement question is structurally hypothetical. MV-02 is an officer cohort with a much larger pension present value, a TSP balance that materially anchors the balance sheet, and the SBP and civilian-transition decisions in active play.

Does the MV-02 corpus model the legacy High-3 pension or BRS?+

Synthesis was calibrated to BRS (the post-2018 default for new entrants and the elected system for many in-service officers who opted in during the 2018 window). Buyers needing pure High-3 households can use MV-02 as a base and override the pension formula in their own pipeline — the structural features (TSP balance, VA loan share, SBP election surface) are still applicable.

Are combat-zone tax exclusion and Roth TSP combat contributions modeled?+

The corpus captures the static income and balance-sheet snapshot but does not encode deployment events or combat-zone exclusion periods. Buyers testing the CZTE branch should layer that as a scenario overlay; the underlying TSP balances and AGI-eligible income are consistent with households where some prior contributions were made under exclusion.

Which synthetic wealth data sets include MV-02 households?+

MV-02 is tagged for B02, B03, B06, B14, B16, and B25 — covering tax planning, retirement strategy, home purchase (VA-loan branch), employee benefits, equity-and-comp testing for the civilian transition case, and military-specific scenarios. See the right-hand sidebar for the bundles that ship MV-02 households.

Is the MV-02 corpus regenerable from current code?+

No. The shipped 1,451-household v3 corpus is frozen as of synthesis; drift was confirmed on 2026-05-09 (see docs/WEALTHSYNTH_STATUS.md §6). Sampler improvements land in a future v4 release with per-archetype golden fixtures in CI; v3 MV-02 households should be used as a static reference set.

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