At 17, I made decisions that I am benefiting from today. I can tell you I didn't talk about it throughout my whole career, but, holy-liftin', I am so grateful for the chief warrant officer who threw forms in front of me when I was 17 and said, “This is important; pay attention.”
Now the problem is they didn't do that with Veterans Affairs, My VAC Account. My VAC Account hadn't been invented when I joined. If those decisions are made at that young age, when bad things happen during your career, you are instantly going to get that relationship being developed while you are still serving. Automatically, at transition, it is not a sudden, abrupt cut, but a move into something you are already familiar with.
Whether you want to, say, take the service number and it goes with you post-release, or get a service number and a My VAC Account number that carries with you in release, it is absolutely critical to build relationships early to make the transition a less stressful and less abrupt process. I don't want to jump in the deep end; I just want to swim to the other end.