Oh Military Finance, can't you do anything right?

Everything happens for a reason. What doesn't kill us makes us stronger.

I admit it, I am quite particular about money and finances. Alright, alright, I can be significantly anal about it. Our pay since we left Germany has fluctuated wildly. At the beginning of last month, we got paid too much. I told R and he said that it was probably clothing allowance. I stuck the extra money in savings and waited. Sure enough, in the middle of the month, we got NO pay. N.O.N.E.

Now, the amount we got overpaid was not as much as our mid month pay was supposed to be, so I asked R to go to finance and ask them what was going on. Because he is wonderful that way, he did. What they told him was that our advance from when we moved off base in Germany was taken out of our pay. Oooo-kay, but we'd already paid that back. Next option? R said he needed to talk to finance at our old base. Okay, that works for me. I also transferred the over payment back into our checking.

Fast forward to today. Our pay still isn't right and R says that we aren't getting any pay on the 15th again. Oh, I so don't think so! When R came home, we pulled his old pay statements and started reviewing them. When we moved off base in Germany, we had to come up with a 1000 Euro security deposit, plus the first month's rent, which was 1000 Euro. The AF will let you 'borrow' the security deposit and it shows up as a debt on your pay stub until you pay it back once you move out of the home. Unfortunately, they don't pay you the housing allowance (rent money) until the end of the month which isn't so handy when you are living in the house and your landlord wants the rent on the first. We took an advance on R's salary to pay the rent, and then paid that back over the next year.

Looking at the pay statements, the monthly payments stopped after we paid the full amount back, but then restarted in December. When our landlord refunded our security deposit, we paid Finance back (this was in November), but for some reason the pay statement is now showing this as not paid either. This is so frustrating. The worst part of it was that we got no notice whatsoever that we weren't going to get any pay last pay period. We just didn't get it. I can't make the numbers add up from the pay statement, so R and I are going together to finance tomorrow to ask them to explain this to us. I just can't wait to hear how this gets explained. I really, truly, can't wait.