Any RAF employees/spouses here please

[Dinoswearunderpants]

Hi all

My husband is applying for an Officer position in RAF and I'm wondering what life's like in RAF.

We have a little one together who's due to start school in September. I am openminded to moving around. I work in Finance and should be able to WFH.

Just curious to hear about people's experiences.

My DH was in the RAF for 22 years (out now) (non commissioned)
You'll have to move every couple of years depending on trade. My best friend's husband was an officer and they moved so many times we lost count (my dh was Airframes and we didn't move as often)

Decent life as long as you don't mind being a single parent quite often..that IS the reality! We stayed put longer than most as DS2 had special needs, and he came out of the RAF when our eldest started secondary as we didn't want to move them again (and we were not up for boarding them)

I have 4 kids (not adults) and it was hard going when DH was away on detatchment , no family nearby to help, BUT there is a good community and I have friends still that I made when the kids were little.

If he makes it up the ranks a bit you'll have a nice married quarter and a decent lifestyle.(even as non commissioned we had a fab married quarter for our last posting..wish we could have bought it!) I was actually slightly sad when he left but it was the right time for our children.

I’m a MoD Civil Servant working closely with the RAF, I don’t think they move around half as much as they used too!
3 years is the standard Tour length but they are having so many issues with recruitment & retention Officers have a lot more choice & can influence where they go & what they do!
where I work they also have the opportunity to WFH for part of the week although that won’t apply to every tour.

Less people live ‘on the patch’ I think they can have money towards their mortgage or rent rather than being provided with accomodation!

it’s a great career, their training & development is amazing, they get great opportunities to go off doing sports express etc had I been younger when I started working there I would have thought about joining up myself!

Army rather than RAF.

We moved a lot. It was fun until it wasn't... we switched to Married Unaccompanied when our DDs were 8&9, due to issues with housing and education. The last straw was our DD being out of school for two months as they couldn't find her a school place despite Military children being a priority group....

However many people stay in one area now.... DHs particular job is one of the highly mobile ones (they can't stay in position for more than two years). We lived in Germany and Cyprus as well all over the UK.

There was good times and bad times. But happily counting down the months now.

My dc is armed forces and her bil is raf. They do move every 2-3 years but depending on speciality they may move less or deploy overseas and you stay in the uk eg he has deployed to Middle East and Estonia and spouses don’t go, 6 months at a time.

loads of perks, eg the discounts on everyday stuff or eating out, guy at local Nando’s also always gives us free drinks as well, he’s ex army himself. Tickets for events, outdoors stuff my dc loves, volunteering for Wimbledon, fa cup, other events. Dc also gets to do public speaking at events plus school outreach when not deployed. Their dp is also forces so not the same but bil’s wife copes fine but need to be self assured! Other spouses on base are friendly apparently

My friend has stayed in the same place for 25 years but they’re away for weeks/months at a time so expect to be a single parent a lot of the time. You need to have your own good support network and hobbies.

Hello!
What Branch is he looking to join as? Experiences can vary quite a bit…

DH has been RAF for the whole of our children’s lives, teens now. It was great when we were all younger, provided us a lot of stability, got us on the property ladder, given DH a varied and challenging career with no uni debt, and we could move around with preschoolers no issues. He deploys for 4 months about every 18 months, but lots of shirkers in the RAF are making this become even more frequent. Very annoying.

We've managed to not move around too much, we have refused to move since they started school basically, I really don’t think it’s good for them. We did one move to place ourselves centrally and get good schools, prior to secondary, but won’t move again now.

DH has managed to stay local but did have to do one posting as a weekend dad, we didn’t like that one bit. He has just turned down a promotion as it would have meant a posting somewhere shite, there is a new ‘stay put’ scheme which enables you to not post, but does have a detrimental impact on career progress.

Thankfully financially I am the higher earner by some margin so he doesn’t need to take promotion, but it’s a shame as he’d like to, but he’s a bit too long in the tooth to tolerate being someone else’s pawn now. He is hanging tight for the next promotion board and will see what happens there, we don’t mind some postings (some allow some WFH), but 5 days away living in a room costing us more than the promotion due to fuel and living costs on top of not seeing us, nope.

So it’s a bit of a young man/woman’s game I think, if you’re happy to go balls deep and post it could be great, but I’d really consider the impact that’ll have on your child. We could justify it earlier on, much harder as they get older.

Thank you so much for the responses. The role is a Medical Support Officer. I have no idea whether that means moving around or not.

I obviously love the idea of living abroad but the reality of being a solo parent doesn't sound great. So long as I can still carry on working and earning a good wage, I'm hoping I can at least pay for help.

He has an online open day soon so he's very early in the interview stages so who knows what might happen.

So usually postings for officers are 3 years, though you can move sooner - I only did one year in one of my tours as I applied for an overseas job that came up.
As Med Support there are lots of places he could work, so you need to make sure that you’ve discussed that as a family. Some people move around, others settle somewhere and have their service person work around them (that’s what my parents did). There are pros and cons to each, so it’s whatever works best for you.

Thanks for the information. Can I ask where abroad they can post? I'd love to live abroad. Do they help with schooling abroad please?

Absolutely! We have quite a few overseas bases, but off the top of my head I’m not sure which ones have Med Support Officers - probably Cyprus (very popular with families!) and the Falklands. One other thing he can look out for once he’s got a couple of years under his belt is an ‘out of branch’ tour. Some jobs can be done by any profession at the correct rank, you just have to get your career manager’s approval to apply - that’s how I did it!
Lots of support for families overseas, accommodation sometimes not what you’d expect to get privately but a lot cheaper… If there isn’t a MOD school you’d be able to get your children into a local school, or if boarding school was something you wanted to look at (got exams coming up or whatever reason) there’s continuity of education allowance which absorbs a big chunk of the cost.

Mine went to Service schools in Cyprus and Germany and they were great at Primary school. Class sizes could be very small as they never knew how many kids of each age they would have one term to the next.
As for put house in Cyprus... we were paying more for the furniture than the house itself!

Its moving within the UK that is problematic for schools at times.

Ex RAF officer here and husband still serving. It’s a great career albeit with some key challenges. Friendly, positive energetic people and amazing opportunities to travel etc. As a partner, it does offer some key decisions - do you move with them or not, for example. Not moving gives you stability for your career and children’s schooling, but it means a lot of times on your own. We have done both. If you have a job that would allow you to work remotely then this can be a great enabler to live together, particularly when children are younger and possibly more flexible about moving. With regards to moving abroad, just look into working remotely very carefully - if you move as a spouse of a service person in EU then you are in the country in a very specific way, covered by the Status of Forces Agreement. This means you can’t work unless you forgoe the rights of that agreement (medical care etc) and pay for a working visa. Your employer would also need to have the governance set up to support this. If you are freelance then theoretically the same rules re the Status of F agreement, but some people do it under the radar.

worth being aware that his initial training will be tough and you will see little of him. You can’t relocate to be together until he has completed that training and got to his first posting.

Having said all that, it can offer a good life so def not all bad- we would both do it again.