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Comment by rikki_100113 on March 11, 2014 at 8:48am

Megan- thank you so much yea I am very frugal like I have my needs but if I dont have the money I do not spend it. Yea I should have put money into another account for him before he left because he was going through it like crazy and I budget for certain things and he goes out of that budget. But right now I am hoping we can save a certain amount each month because I plan on moving down there before he comes back from deployment and need to figure out how much that will be. Plus we have like 3 credit cards I need to pay off before he comes home. Lots to do but I am so frugal with my money that it really wont be hard for me to save it. Its just when he goes into ports thats whats going to kill us but the most he has taken out so far has been 250 and thats for 2 ports so far. But hopefully their next port he can go to an exchange and switch it to the currency for what ever country he is in. 

Thank you all for your advice I am one to always freak out and over think things before they happen. But everyone's advice has been awesome and really shows that I can save up some if not what I wanted to.

Comment by meagan5220 on March 10, 2014 at 9:53pm

I saved sooo much money while my husband was deployed. The first few months I was finishing up a lucrative nanny job without much in the way of bills and saved a good $6-7 grand then the last five months I saved another $8 grand. We have a separate account for port visits and a pretty strict budget. Like His deployed was 6 schedule port visits and before deployment we put $1500 in a bank account for his port visits only. Due to him spending money like crazy in SD when the ship stopped to pick up their squadrons I had to add some more later, about $300. He was allowed to spend what he wanted in each port but He knew at the end of the day, he wasn't going to get anymore money to spend. He spent more in SD and during the 7 day delay before his ship pulled out on himself than I did his entire deployment on myself. He got $100 a month to spend on his cash card on the ship and then we did like $50 a month or so for his calling card. I am super frugal so that helped and he didn't have access to our checking account lol. He knows he spends too much so he is ok with me being a money Nazi. haha. When he was gone I spent so little on groceries and so little doing anything else. I rarely went anywhere so that helped too. I could go 3-4 weeks on one tank of gas lol. We talked about it during deployment about how much money we wanted to save at least every month and then how anything extra we didn't spend was going straight to savings. It helped knowing we would be needing money to get him a car after deployment and need to have money to go home for post deployment leave for three weeks and we knew if we didn't save we wouldn't be able to. He got like an extra $700 a month during deployment, between family sep, hazard pay, and taxes.

Comment by rikki_100113 on March 10, 2014 at 8:24am

Beachmom- Thank you so much for all the information. Yea i have talked with my husband and we just agreed to save what we can. This is our very first deployment and I had no clue as to what to expect. And he spends about 100 on each port which are coming far and less in between. but his thing is is that well we have these paychecks before i go to the next one so we are ok and he doesnt understand that I am trying to save to move to be with him and trying to save to have a cushion for when I do since I might not have a job for a while.Men can live with them and cant live without them.... But gotta love him for thinking way ahead lol

Comment by beachmom76 on March 10, 2014 at 8:14am

Rikki- The amount of savings really depends on so many things: how much is your husband paying in taxes now?  Take a look at your husband's LES...what is being withheld? Once he enters the tax eclusion zone, you will have that much more in his paychecks. Pretty sweet deal!

A lot of times, Sailors automatically put Single and Zero dependents when they join the Navy and never change it; this results in overpaying taxes every month and getting a huge refund. Financial counselors don't recommend this because you are basically giving the government an interest -free loan. If you can live without that money, invest it in TSP or some other savings account. Lots of people go into debt every month and could really use the extra dollars in their paychecks.

I found it easy to save during deployments because I spent a lot less on groceries when hubby was away. Also, less money on gas, insurance decreased, suspended his cell phone...Of course, when he was junior, he was on submarines and he had nowhere to spend any money. I used to send him away with a shoebox with six months worth of pre-written cards and letters. I included a check fo $10 every month...lol. He almost never had port visits and couldn't go anywhere to spend anything.  We learned the hard way to set up a specific budget for his spending and gave him a separate bank account...saves on bounced checks!

This is information I cut from the Navy News Service about the changes to Imminent Danger Pay...

• The DoD news release noted the following areas would no longer be designated as imminent danger areas for IDP purposes:
  
  * The nine land areas of East Timor, Haiti, Liberia, Oman, Rwanda, Tajikistan, United Arab Emirates, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.
  
  * The six land areas and airspace above Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Serbia and Montenegro.
  
  * The four water areas of the Arabian Sea, Gulf of Aden, Gulf of Oman, and the Red Sea.
  
  * The water area and air space above the Persian Gulf.

To read the entire article, follow this link:

http://www.navy.mil/submit/display.asp?story_id=78571

Comment by rikki_100113 on March 9, 2014 at 8:31am

Beachkom how much were you able to save? And does anyone know what areas the 5th fleets cover?

Comment by beachmom76 on March 9, 2014 at 8:13am

Imminent danger pay for much of the 5th fleet area is being discontinued effective June 1, 2014. The combat pay tax exclusion is still in effect. The tax exclusion is a great deal; we were able to save a lot!

Comment by Anti M on March 8, 2014 at 7:47am

The housing allowance varies by zip code.  

http://www.defensetravel.dod.mil/site/bahCalc.cfm

Comment by Evangeline on March 8, 2014 at 2:30am

Hello ladies! There is however a $2k housing allowance correct?

Comment by Emily-aaronsgirl11 on March 7, 2014 at 6:05pm

Oh yeah. Family separation pretty much just replaces the BAS they take out of the paycheck. Forgot about that. 

Yeah, absolutely no income is taxed when they're in the 5th fleet. Which includes any reenlistment bonuses they sign for when they're over. My husband signed his reenlistment when they were in the 5th fleet which was incredibly smart because if you sign when you're not in a tax-free zone, it's taxed at 20%. So each year when we get an installment of that bonus it's all tax free just because he signed when he was in the 5th.

I'm not sure what 70 euros is.. okay just looked it up, that's not bad at all compared to what my husband would spend in port. He'd usually blow through about 500 bucks in the three days they were in port. Granted, that was just about the only 500 dollars he was spending for the entire month or so, buuuut, it was definitely frustrating to limit what I was buying and work so hard to save money and make extra payments on debt when he would blow through that much in just a few days. It's kind of something you have to accept to a certain extent. Obviously if it's putting you in financial trouble that's not acceptable, but they do spend weeks upon weeks working almost 24/7, so when they pull into port, relaxing is the top priority. 

Comment by rikki_100113 on March 7, 2014 at 3:46pm

Emily thank you so very much I was wondering about this as to why or how he came up with these numbers. Yea he spent like 70 euros at his first port but I think I am going to cut him off after that lol. But now while he is in 5th fleet all the money he makes including like base pay will not be taxed at all? 

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