State Department: Last salary 150k, 30 years service - combined military, now retired, annunity 65k, stress - only from working with IT people who didn't know that HD was an industry term for 20 years. Traveled the world, free rent and utes, got to know people you see on TV every day. John Negroponte is really a good guy that works hard trying to do good for the nation. Retirement is not as good in the new plan, but the travel is still great. I did work for IBM and they promised everything and screwed their retirees, glad I left them for the government job in 1981.
Flash, dash, and money isn't everything. Couple of times with State I thought just living until the retirement date was a pretty good goal for the day and did! Lots of fustrations with the bureaucracy and the bureaucrats.
Don't automatically exclude government from your plans. You just may live long enough to retire!
Oh, and I retired to Alabama - a state with one of the lowest cost of livings in the nation. I live within fifty miles of a place called Unclaimed Baggage. They are the people who buy all of your toys that you lose while traveling from the airlines. I get them for dimes on the dollar. Last trip: 1 Spiderco knife - $15.00, 1 Archos Gmini XS 200 for $75.00. That and the weather is great with mountain scenery. My house overlooks the city and the valley where the river runs through it.
You make more money, the IRS just takes it and the cost of living where you have to live absorbs it. State pays your expenses while you are assigned abroad. For years, my only utilities were telephone and cable TV.