Okay I am going to lay out in order a time line then address your $$$ question
1) Choose Branch (for this instance Army)
2) See recrtuiter again (at this point you should have talked to all branches (Jar Heads, Fly Boys, Squids, Puddle Pirates, and Army [sub note do any of the other branches have ball busting names for us???] And I say all the names with love)
3) Go to MEPS Military Entrance Processing Station
4) Look at jobs and find one you want and a contract you can live with.
5) Sign said contract
6) Waiting time. Use this time to do physical training. I recommend lots of studying ranks, people in charge in the US, and of course SHIT TONS of push ups, sit ups and running. Some branches have other things, like Marines have Pullups, the Air Force have crunches, and the Navy........well I donno.
7) GO TO BASIC At this point the pay, insurence, health care, and people bitching at you kicks in. Bonus (if any) will be discussed later.
GO TO SCHOOL for your job. You will do physical training, school, and studying.
9) If active duty you report to your school. All info following is for Active Duty. If you choose Reserves or National Guard you will go home till your first drill.
10) You can now upon inprocessing go to the college office and learn about the colleges offered on base and locally. On line will be strongly reccomended, and I also encourage this.
As for deployments, they come here and there and are branch of service, job, and duty station specific. For example if you go to Korea you have little to no chance of deployment. You will prolly do alot of field work there, but its not too shitty.
As for money here is a link to the 2010 Military pay charts. You will be looking at the E- section for enlisted. If you have enough college you might be able to come in as an E-4.
Military Base Pay
You will be looking at the first colum as you wont have 2 years.
As for the 2k a month um bro lemme explain something here, since your not married you will get a meal card and thats 3 meals a day at the Dining FACility free. If you somehow get off base housing (which as was already pointed out CAN happen but again is branch and location specific) you will get EXTRA money for housing, and for food. No meal card so if you go to the DFAC you would have to pay. Keep in mind having a civilian girlfriend does not give you any added ability to live off base.
Hope we are being helpful bro!!!!
J