Nice, I've got a bunch of friends and family who served and made off like bandits. The more technical the job, the happier they were with their lives, btw.

If I were you, I'd just stick the $1k into a Roth IRA into VT (an etf) and forget about it until I'm 65.

If you invest in an individual company, you have to worry about how it's doing. You have to follow the news in case their CEO has a stroke, or a competitor starts kicking their ass, or their supply chain collapses from a hurricane and they might never recover, or any number of other things. If you invest an in index which invests in a large number of companies, it all averages out and you're good.