Which benefits *can* you opt out of?

[Pedro de San Patricio]

You can't decline your paycheck or get a waiver for a second job. You can't trade TriCare for your own insurance. You can't decline to promote or decide against using TA. You can't surrender your accrued leave. Initially I was told that these are all things you can do. Upon further inquiry that's actually bullshit. It may be so in writing but you're going to be declined if you have the balls to try.

• Leave, for instance. I managed to get about 78 at one point before taking it became mandatory. Suddenly "you don't have to take it if you don't want to" became "you're going to explain to the commander why you lost 18 days of leave," which further became "explaining that to the commander was never a real option," all in the space of about a week.
• Promotion testing. I'm getting out. Almost everyone I know in my field here is getting out. So far that's still seen as acceptable, with stop-loss still being only a distant rumor. With that being the case I decided that the few slots available should be going to the people whose careers will most be affected by it, and that I would not be one of those people. I was told this is okay. Now I understand that refusal to sign is not okay.
• TA is similar. I work in one of the least physically demanding jobs in the most secure building in the local area. My work by nature rarely contributes anything of importance. It's worth effort because of those rare occasions but I'm under zero delusions that I couldn't easily be replaced, with the only limiting factor being the need to force my replacement to retrain from another career field. There are other people who deserve this resource more. Almost none of these people will accept this fact.
• Your paycheck. For the same reasons as TA (along with recognition that we're strapped for cash due to mismanagement and 15 years of war as it is) I asked how one would go about declining it. I quickly discovered that this isn't a thing one does.