Reply #35: The housing allowance is separate from the base pay. It's a benefit, not a pay. [View All]

[MADem]

Housing allowance payment depends on where the house is--the allowance is much higher in, say, Rome Italy or New York City than it is in Idaho or Texas. They've changed the way they compute it over the last ten years or so. I haven't kept up with the methodology, so I don't know if they're doing a better or worse job of keeping payments in sync with locality costs or not.

If you google Fiscal Year (FY) 2007 military pay scales you should be able to come up with the pay -- keep in mind that is before state and federal taxes, and does not include any other special pays, like family separation allowance, or any bonuses received and paid out over time for successful completion of advanced training and performing a special skillset.

I can remember living on peanuts. I had absolutely NO disposable income when I started out, and wasn't above showing up at someone's house around dinnertime to try to cadge a free meal. But then, they were paying people in the dark back then!