Built by enlisted, for enlisted.
The help available to a sergeant getting out is thin, generic, and usually attached to someone's sales funnel. Boots and Bearings is the tool set that should have existed.
Who's behind it
One of us builds it. A lot of us shaped it.
The site itself is built and maintained by one person. What's in it comes from a lot more — veterans who've said what they wished they'd known, what the TAP class skipped, and which employers actually stand behind their veteran hiring claims.
The employer ERG ratings come from veterans working inside those companies. The city rankings are built from public data with a published methodology you're welcome to argue with. None of it is one person's opinion dressed up as data.
Nobody here is a career counselor, a financial adviser, or a VA representative. We're people who did this and paid attention.
I'm Jim. Army, 11B. I deployed to Iraq, got stop-lossed, and went back. Five years, out as a sergeant in 2006.
I wasn't a war hero and I'm not going to pretend the transition was harder or more dramatic than it was. What it was, was badly supported. The Army decided when I left. Then I got a briefing, a checklist, and a handshake — and after that I was on my own working out what my MOS was worth, which benefits I actually rated, and where I could afford to live.
I went from infantry to mechanical engineering. Almost nothing carried over. Nobody could tell me how to make that jump, so I worked it out slowly and wasted a lot of time doing it. That's the gap this site exists to close.
I've spent the twenty years since on the other side of it, helping people I served with and the people they sent my way. Same questions every time. Same gaps. This site is those answers, written down and made searchable, so the next person doesn't have to find someone like me first.
If something here is wrong, tell me. I'll fix it, or say plainly that I couldn't verify it.
What this isn't
Not a government agency. Not affiliated with the Department of Defense or the Department of Veterans Affairs, and nothing here is official guidance — for anything binding, your transition office and the VA are the authority, and we link out to them constantly.
Not a lead-generation front either. We don't sell your data, we don't hand your email to a for-profit school, and no company pays to rank higher in anything we publish.
Where the numbers come from
Every figure traces to a public source. Salary and job-growth data comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Occupational matching uses the O*NET military crosswalk. Nonprofit ratings are built from IRS Form 990 filings. SkillBridge listings come from the DoD program directory. Cost-of-living comparisons use BEA regional price parities.
When a number is an estimate, we say so. When we don't know, we say that too.
Straight talk about accuracy
Benefits rules change, and they change without much warning. Our guides cite the regulation or agency page behind each claim, but a tool on a website is a starting point — not a substitute for confirming with your finance office, your transition counselor, or the VA before you make a decision that costs money.
If you're inside 18 months of separating, the transition timeline is the fastest way to see what you should be doing right now.
Open the transition timeline →