Navigating PCS Season: Moving Tips and Personal Updates

[00:00:00] Speaker: Hello, hello, and welcome back to the show. Today's gonna be a little bit different. You are gonna get me in the car while I am waiting for one of my daughters to finish an appointment. Because we are in Cuckoo Crazy Town PCS season right now and I have a house full of people. And there's really no other time or place for me to record an episode.

[00:00:27] Speaker: So I'm hanging out in my car in the parking lot. You guys get to hang out with me. So what we're going to talk about today, I have a couple of things. So the first one is we're going to go over just quickly cause I've been seeing a lot of the same questions on military spouse groups. are what financial entitlements do you get for moving?

[00:00:47] Speaker: So dislocation allowance, advanced PPM, all those things. We're going to touch on those briefly, what they are and how much you get and how early can you get it. And then I will bring you up to speed on our current PCS. So we are, I just looked at the calendar. We actually have a move date now. So we are six weeks out, six weeks out from our full Diddy move.

[00:01:10] Speaker: So we'll get into that too. Okay. So first I wanted to touch on what you are entitled to financially for your move. Everybody is entitled to, hang on, I gotta, I gotta go back. So I make sure that I give you the right information. Don't want to give you the wrong information. So DLA, DLA is dislocation allowance.

[00:01:38] Speaker: How much you are eligible for as far as dislocation allowance is depends on your dependence and your rate. You would have to go to the defense travel management office website. I will link it in the show notes to determine what your DLA rate is to see how much you would get DLA is typically paid out 30 days prior to your, when you fill out your paperwork, you state when your PCS is commencing and you 30 days ahead of that is when you would get DLA, but you have to ask for an advance.

[00:02:25] Speaker: Otherwise, it will be paid afterwards.

[00:02:30] Speaker: For DLA you get 80 percent of your estimated payment in advance and then the rest is paid after you file for reimbursement at your new installation after your move. So what dislocation allowance is supposed to be for, is it supposed to be for the costs that we incur during the move?

[00:02:50] Speaker: Like deposits that you have to pay on properties. Like if you're going to rent a house or an apartment deposit, you might need to pay for that deposit. You might need to pay for utilities, restocking your refrigerator. It's supposed to help offset, right? Some of the expenses that we incur that is what DLA is supposed to be for.

[00:03:11] Speaker: The only people who do not get DLA are if you are if it is your very first PCS, so like you're coming out of school, you don't have any dependents and you're going to your first assignment, you do not get DLA and you also do not get DLA if you are retiring. So you are allowed one PCS. after retirement that the military will pay for, but you do not get the DLA.

[00:03:42] Speaker: So you still would get a PPM or a military move, but you will not, you just don't get DLA for that last one, but everybody else is required is eligible for DLA. Okay. Then if you are doing a PPM or personally procured move, which used to be called a Diddy move or do it yourself move, If you are doing a do it yourself move or PPM move, you can get up to 60 percent of an advanced payment for a PPM move no sooner than 45 days prior to the sign out date.

[00:04:21] Speaker: So when you are filling out your paperwork, you want to make sure that you are being considerate with when that date might be, and that can get a little fussy for example, Michael's not detaching until like the middle of August, but we're going to be moving in July. So then you have to wait until his orders have him detaching and back it up from that date.

[00:04:52] Speaker: Not necessarily when we're leaving, but when the, when the detachment date is for the military member. So if you are moving, If you are moving separately from each other for school reasons or, you know, personal reasons, whatever It's that can make it a little bit tight because you might be looking, which is the situation that we're in.

[00:05:13] Speaker: You might be looking at places that are available now that meet your criteria. And so you're going to go a little bit earlier than your service member. So that kind of makes that a little bit, a little bit messy sometimes. But any, but, but it is good to know that you can get up to 60 percent for PPM move.

[00:05:31] Speaker: So you would go into, there's a calculator that you can use on it for a PPM move that will help you calculate how much money you should be allotted. So they're now paying a hundred percent. So you get a hundred percent of what the military would pay a carrier to move your household goods. They will pay you to move them yourself.

[00:05:50] Speaker: A hundred percent and you can get that 45 days before your sign out date. And so that is to, oh, I'm sorry. So I had started to say. that you can go on and calculate how much you are expected to receive and they pay it by pound. So I believe the rate right now is 65 cents a pound. So yeah, I do some math.

[00:06:14] Speaker: If you are allowed 10, 000 pounds, You take 65 cents times 10, 000 pounds. That's how much money they're going to pay you to move your stuff. It also depends on how far you're going to go the other thing that I've been seeing a lot of questions about Are people asking about using pods, using U Pack, using you know, a U Haul or a Penske truck, which one is best? What should you do? And I, I, I bet you're, can you guess, can you guess what the answer is?

[00:06:51] Speaker: me tell you, it depends. It's a personal decision. It's a personal decision. So, okay, so let's just go over them quickly. The, Penske truck and U Haul, you just have to do your research to be straight up honest with you. Put in your location, where you're, where you want to pick up, where you're going to drop off, go on to U Haul's website, see what they say.

[00:07:16] Speaker: Go on to Penske's website, see what they say. When we moved from Washington to Colorado, Penske was the cheapest, but looking at now going back from Colorado back to Washington state, U Haul is cheaper now. So it just depends You just have to, you just have to look around. And then again, I've said this many, many, many times.

[00:07:34] Speaker: I'm going to keep saying it look around. So for example, we live right outside of Denver. If we want to get a truck from here to Washington in Denver or in our town that we live in, it's like 3, 500. If we go 45 minutes South to Colorado Springs, it's 800 less. So why would you not get a truck from, so you, you've really, and then returning, if you return it to, if I return it to you know, Tacoma, how much is that going to cost?

[00:08:07] Speaker: If I return it to Silverdale, how much is that going to cost? If I return, you know, you look around that way too, because there is, there can be a big difference. And if it's not, if it's a cheap flight away, so example would be San Diego. If you're trying to rent a truck from San Diego up to Washington state, state, it's going to cost you what, three to, I don't know, 3, 500.

[00:08:27] Speaker: If you go to Vegas, that same truck is going to be two grand. And Vegas is a what 75 plane ticket, you know, or a three hour drive. Like that's. That's going to save you a lot of money. So look around your area to when you're looking for the best, when you're trying to find the best price and look outside to.

[00:08:46] Speaker: So for example, when we moved from Washington to Colorado, we got our truck out of Spokane because it was 1, 500 cheaper to get our truck from Spokane than it was from Seattle. And Michael flew, it was like a 50 flight. He flew to Spokane, drove the truck back and then off we went and you don't pay for mileage.

[00:09:06] Speaker: So it doesn't, you know, driving over to Seattle and it's just your time. But for 1500 bucks, that's a pretty big savings. So definitely again, shop around into different cities where you are. To find the cheapest rate that you can. And then the pods versus the upac. So pods and then U-Haul has their U box or whatever is their kind of version of pods.

[00:09:33] Speaker: And then the UAC is they literally bring a semi-truck and park the back of it in front of your house. you fill it up and it's a, so it's a 28 foot truck. If you don't need 28 feet, you block off however much and you only pay for the space that you use. And then they come and pick up the truck and they'll deliver it to where you want to deliver it to.

[00:09:55] Speaker: So that can be appealing in that you aren't driving a huge 26 foot truck across the country or wherever you might need to go. But you know, some of the downsides that I've heard, we've personally have never done it before. Some of the downsides that I've heard is that if you don't use the full truck you only use part of it Someone else is gonna put their stuff in there too And you there is a like there's like this like it's not like a full wall But it's kind of where you block your stuff off.

[00:10:26] Speaker: So your stuff is Secure quote unquote. I I don't know it just to me And maybe this is just me being a princess, but if we're not going to use the full truck and someone else's stuff is going in, in that, I don't love that. Although, although, because what if they're really dirty? Is that bad to say? I'm just saying what's on my mind.

[00:10:51] Speaker: I'm free flowing these days. There's like zero filter happening. But I guess it's the same thing if you do a military move. If you do a military move, they're going to put all your stuff on the truck and then you have no idea what else they're doing, what they're doing with your stuff. I've been hearing more and more about people who have had their stuff loaded on their truck.

[00:11:08] Speaker: They think they're going door to door or whatever. And then come to find out their stuff got taken off the truck and put back on. And half of it got one here and half of it went there and stuff. Their stuff is being moved around after it gets on the truck. That I believe that I've been hearing that happening more and more lately, which again is why we are team full Diddy because you are in charge of your stuff and you're in charge of your stuff.

[00:11:34] Speaker: So Price wise, I think you pack is a little bit cheaper than the pods are really expensive. And, and what it looks good initially when you're like, Oh look, I can get this pod and I put all my stuff in there and it's only this amount of money and then you tell them where you want it to go and it like triples the price, like depending on how far you're transporting your pods.

[00:11:58] Speaker: So that, It adds up. And again, if you're doing a ditty move, one is you're in control of your stuff and then two, I think Most of us are trying to make some money. You know what I mean? Because at the rate that we're at right now, the, the government is paying us a hundred percent of what they would pay a contractor to do your move job, which is how it should be.

[00:12:21] Speaker: If you're, my stuff is still getting moved from one location to the other, whether I do it or somebody else does it, I should still get the same amount of money. So I think it needs to stay at a hundred percent. That's my personal opinion. So I'm glad that that's where it is. But You know, part of what you, your goal as you're doing a PPM or Diddy move is you're trying to keep your expenses as low as you can so that you have more of a profit.

[00:12:50] Speaker: Right. And I, and I know there's a lot of controversy and a lot of people talking about making money on moves. But you know, the long and short of it is it 100 percent sucks. It 100 percent sucks. I don't care if the military's moving you or if you're moving yourself, it sucks. Hands down, not fun. Zero out of five stars do not recommend, right?

[00:13:15] Speaker: It is not enjoyable. So So whatever we, I don't know if you even want to call it like a bonus. I'm not going to get into that. I'm not going to get into that because I don't think that's an argument worth having. If anybody has that argument to have, you can send me an email. Okay. So, okay. So we did pods versus you pack.

[00:13:34] Speaker: We talked about the different money. Okay. So then let me catch you up on where we are. So this is going to be like soap opera day, one life to live. Again, I don't really mince here. I, I give it to you straight and it's, it's pretty crappy. It's pretty crappy right now. So we positives let's go with, we'll, we'll, we're going to do.

[00:13:59] Speaker: We're going to do a poop sandwich. Okay. So I'm going to give you some, some good stuff. I'm going to give you some crappy stuff and then we're going to end with some good stuff. Okay. So the first part we do have orders. Hip, hip, hooray. We have just secured a house. Yay. Literally signed the lease today.

[00:14:18] Speaker: That was a whole rigmarole. We are renting again, sight unseen. So fingers crossed for us. Wish us luck. And so, so the downs, the positives. Okay. So the positives first, it is in the school district that we want to be in. It's really close to the school actually. And close for Michael. It's within our BAH.

[00:14:43] Speaker: It's the number of bedrooms that we wanted. It has a yard. They allow both of our pets. All of those things are good. It's not a super old house because I'm a princess. It's fine. I'm, I'm the first one to tell you I'm a house. I'm a house princess. I don't want old and yucky. And honestly, if you are moving back, if you're going to the greater, Washington peninsula area.

[00:15:06] Speaker: And that's a lot of what the rentals are. They're old. They're building like the eighties and earlier and they haven't been updated and they still want what the top end of our BAH is for it. And I'm just, I'm not feeling that. I'm not feeling that at all. So this house is a little bit on, it was built in 2018.

[00:15:25] Speaker: So That's not too bad. So we've got so we have the house secured. The downside though, is that, I mean, I've been looking for houses since we knew we were going there, right? Who's with me? Raise your hand. But the hard part is is that you're really kind of stuck in limbo because Properties are not coming up that they're available now.

[00:15:51] Speaker: They're available now or within the next 30 days. And so if you're three to four months out from a move, you're not, you're, you can maybe keep an eye on things, but there's nothing that's going to fit your criteria, probably move in wise, you know what I'm saying? So. We finally found a house. It fit. I mean, it was, it doesn't have air conditioning.

[00:16:09] Speaker: That's the other thing. And we've lived in Washington before and I know that it's nice and temperate most of the time, but there's a good six to seven weeks of the summer where it is hot and you want air conditioning. So this house does not have air conditioning. So we're gonna, we're gonna figure that out as we come, as we go along.

[00:16:29] Speaker: So I'll, I'll let you know how that goes. But is that they wanted a move in date at the beginning of June and we were not planning to move until the middle of July. And so we're ending up in a spot now where the, so the owners were willing to go to the middle of June, but that was the latest that they would do.

[00:16:48] Speaker: So now we're paying rent on a house for a month before we're actually going to be there. And I feel like a lot of military families get put in that spot because you have, You have criteria, right? Like, this is the kind of house we want. This is the area we want to be in. If your kids are school aged, especially if they're senior school aged, you are, that's like, that's mainly what we're looking for is where can we get our kids into the best school, right?

[00:17:15] Speaker: What do you guys look for that? That was like a huge, a huge part of our decision making process was the school and then the proximity to the base for Michael. So So now we're paying we're paying for a month that we don't need to be there. So that hurts. And so then again, when you're talking about, Oh, you're going to make so much money on a P, that's not fair.

[00:17:38] Speaker: You shouldn't blah, blah, blah, it because we're out of pocket, all of this money. And, and now we're outside of our advance window, right? We're not within 30 to 45 days of our, of his detachment date yet. So we've gotten zero out money travel, advanced travel at DLA. Advanced PPM. We haven't gotten any of that stuff yet.

[00:18:04] Speaker: So we're having to come up with deposits and all this stuff. on our own, which really hurts. It really hurts. And I know, again, there's a lot of other families that are in this position too, because the housing market sucks. It's bad. The rental market is really tight. Housing is really tight. And it's, you know, it's, and let's touch on that for a second.

[00:18:27] Speaker: Cause that was another thing that I wanted to talk about is I've been also seeing a lot of people asking about living on vape. on base versus living off base. And I think that that really depends on the area that you're in. It depends on the rental market where you are and the type of housing that you're eligible for.

[00:18:48] Speaker: So I think for a lot of people, again, depending on what your BAH rate is, you can rent a home out in town. For what your BAH is or close to what your BAH is. Mind you, BAH is supposed to cover 90 percent of your rent and utilities. That ain't happening. Like we're, we're, we're covering our rent, but all of the utilities are out of pocket for us at this point, which I'm counting as a win.

[00:19:20] Speaker: Honestly, the last couple of places we've been, we've not only been upside down on, on BAH, like we're way over our BAH just in the rent. And then there's utilities on top of that. So I feel like we're kind of winning in this spot where we're, our rent is exactly almost exactly what our BAH is. So we're just going to be out of pocket.

[00:19:41] Speaker: Those utilities. Okay. So living on base positives. You are, you don't really sign a lease, lease, lease. It's a. It's a here we've moved in and you're required to give 30 days notice when you're ready to vacate. Otherwise, that's it. You don't have to go through every year signing a new lease. Is my house going to be rented out or sold out from underneath me, which are all concerns.

[00:20:07] Speaker: If you're living out in town, it's theirs. It's there. It's yours. Pets you're allowed to have. I think it's two. Some of them are a little bit more lenient than that. I believe. Again, it depends. It depends on the base that you're at. It depends on a lot of different things. But so pet, you don't have to worry about your pets and then utilities are significantly cheaper.

[00:20:29] Speaker: So you're not going to have a, you only have like, I think it's water and electric, that's it. And it's prorated. So as opposed to living out in town, where you might have trash and sewer and all these gas and electric and all these other ones that you don't necessarily have on base. Downsides. it is not easy to get people.

[00:20:50] Speaker: If you have anybody come to visit you, if you are you're buying furniture and it needs to get delivered, you're gonna have to go to the gate and escort those people onto the base. It can be a little bit of a pain in the neck in that regard. And also, if you've got people visiting and they want to go do something, you gotta go with them because they gotta get back on base.

[00:21:08] Speaker: So that could be kind of a pain in the neck. And then, of course, Again, depending on where you are, some of the housing is real bad. There's mold problems. There's maintenance issues. There's deferred maintenance. It just it depends on where you are. I highly highly highly recommend trying to connect with a local property manager or Or call the housing office on the installation that you're going to and see if you can get connected with anybody there and find out what the facebook groups are.

[00:21:36] Speaker: Find out because there's facebook groups for everything, for all of the little neighborhoods, all the little pockets, this section of housing, this section of housing, people that are looking for like PCS groups and all kinds of stuff like that. Get into that stuff so that you can hear people's opinion because again, everybody's opinions and experiences are going to be different, but I highly recommend.

[00:22:00] Speaker: So that's really kind of the, the difference between housing and it's really what's best for your family and what can you do for us? I feel like if we can live out in town for what our BAH is, I would rather be out in town just for the ease of. Just for the ease of accessibility, you know, so that's just us.

[00:22:21] Speaker: Okay. So catching you up on where we are. We have a house, we have orders, we are flushing out our timeline right now for packing out and moving. I have already packed probably half of the house because we are, we own our home here in Colorado, we're gonna be selling it. So we're putting it on the market here shortly.

[00:22:42] Speaker: And so we had all the pictures done earlier this week. And so it was pretty much pack half the house in preparation for pictures and putting the house on the market to, you know, make it look the best that we can. A lot of packing has honestly already happened, which is a good thing, but it's also incredibly stressful. 

[00:23:01] Speaker: And then just, this is what happens. Murphy's law, right? We like to make fun of Murphy coming to visit and we have been hit with thing after thing after thing after thing. And, and I know that I am, I am not unique in this situation. It happens to all of us and sometimes it's worse than others. And this has been particularly bad for us.

[00:23:25] Speaker: So I broke my finger. It was my fault. I was cleaning up after one of my classes at the gym and I picked up two 15 pound dumbbells with my left hand. I don't recommend doing that and I dropped them and the way that it came off of my finger, it broke my finger. Luckily, it only broke my finger at the fingertip, so I can still use my finger.

[00:23:49] Speaker: Okay. It was pretty gnarly for about two weeks. It's gotten a lot better now, but it still makes it really hard when you're packing and trying to carry boxes around. There's that. And then our sweet little Izzy B is, she'll be 13 in July. She started having seizures. And in the last couple of weeks, they have increased in frequency significantly.

[00:24:07] Speaker: Like she had two, two days in a row and she's just taking a really long time to recover out of those. And so we're, we have now started her on medication for that. And she is responding well so far to the medicine. So hopefully fingers crossed. That she, that will help keep the seizures at bay cause we're not ready to say goodbye.

[00:24:33] Speaker: We, we, yeah, we're not ready to say goodbye. So there's that. And then the icing on the cake as we are literally scrambling, scrambling, scrambling, trying to get the house and everything ready for pictures that happened this past Tuesday. And on Monday, I was picking Michael and I because he, I had just picked, he was on travel for, of course, of course, the whole week prior leading up to the pictures of the house and all this packing and things are happening.

[00:25:03] Speaker: I'm single parenting through that too, because that's our life. And so Michael's home. So we both went to pick up the girls from school. We had just got Savannah gets first. And then we had just gotten Sophia. We were on our way home. and the guy behind us did not stop, plowed into the back of us, rear ended us so hard.

[00:25:21] Speaker: It pushed us into the car in front of us. It was like a four car thing from the guy behind us. My car is almost definitely totaled. And we're all okay, which I'm really grateful for because again, we were all in the car. We just have sore necks and sore backs cause it was, he, it was a kid, it was a kid behind us and he wasn't paying attention.

[00:25:43] Speaker: He was probably on his phone and just straight up plowed into the back of us. So now we've got that situation trying to figure out what we're doing with the car, scrambling to get a rental car as we're trying to get all these projects done around the house before pictures. getting a rental car and then my car got towed away a day before yesterday.

[00:26:04] Speaker: So we're still waiting to figure out what they're going to do. It's just, Oh my God, you guys, I can't even, I, it's a lot, but it is you know, the silver lining, I think for us is that we've secured a house. So I'm trying to focus on that right now. That we have that and we kind of have a little bit of a, at least we know now where the girls are going to go to school.

[00:26:28] Speaker: I feel better about that. And we are again, flushing out our plan of timeline exactly when we're, when we're going to go, the girls and I are most likely going to go early. Michael can't leave until the, until a little bit into August. So. We're going to be separated there for a little bit But I think it'll be nice for us to kind of get settled into because it's so weird if you've ever done The where you're you're selling a home Prior to moving.

[00:26:58] Speaker: It's just like if you do it, right? Oh, is that a bad thing to say? I'm just gonna say it. I don't care is You really have to declutter. You've got to take all your personal crap out You got to clear all the surfaces and You gotta put all your kids toys away. You gotta, like, it needs to look like a model home.

[00:27:17] Speaker: And you argue with me if you want, argue with me if you want, but I'm just saying, when you're on Zillow and you're looking at pictures and you're looking at people's laundry laying on the bed and their hair dryers all over the bathroom counter. I'm judging. That's my boy. Come on. You can't even put your hair dryer away.

[00:27:35] Speaker: You couldn't put your dirty laundry out of the picture. You couldn't make your bed. Come on. If like you need to, if you want your house to sell for top dollar and you want it to sell quickly, it has got to look good and it needs to look good in photos. And that means you got to declutter and pack like literally half your crap away so that it looks good.

[00:27:55] Speaker: People need to be able to envision themselves in your house, and if you've got tchotchkes and Crap and art and like all these crazy patterns and you've got furniture jammed into rooms People can't see it and your house is gonna sit there for longer That's just that's my opinion you you do you boo, but that's that's been my experience.

[00:28:15] Speaker: And so We've we it is it is not enjoyable None of us like it like our everything echoes because there's there's hardly anything on the walls like very minimal art on the walls at all. Like all of the surfaces are clear. So it's like the house is really echoey and it just doesn't feel warm and welcoming because like we put all of our stuff away.

[00:28:38] Speaker: You know what I mean? Like it just, it's, it's kind of, it's kind of cold and sucky and we're not, none of us are a fan. So I think it'll be good for us to get to Washington and be able to put all of our stuff out and like kind of settle in and get comfortable, especially for the, it's been really hard for the girls because We've litter I don't know about your kids, but oh, my lanta.

[00:29:00] Speaker: They, like every, every surface is covered. Like, you couldn't see a baseboard in their room. Like, the whole room, the perimeter of the room lined with stuff. Stuffed animals and You know, everything like books and, oh my gosh, just so much stuff. And so now, and even on the walls, like just tons of stuff everywhere, which is what they want.

[00:29:23] Speaker: Like, and I'm good with that. It's your room, you know, don't destroy anything, but like you can make it however you want. Right. But when we're in the process of selling, you've got to, you got to really depersonalize all that stuff. And so a lot of it went away and they're, right. enjoying living in their rooms anymore.

[00:29:42] Speaker: So that's been tough. But so I feel like coming down into, coming down into the, the move, at least I feel like we're ahead of the game because I've already packed so much stuff, which is great. Bonus tip. If you've got space, if you're, if you're a dittier or a PPM or Do keep your boxes. If you can keep your boxes, keep your boxes that keeps your costs down.

[00:30:07] Speaker: And and then it just makes it easier as you're ready to move the next time. Like I just, I've just been buying packing paper. I don't need boxes. I've got tons of boxes cause we were able to save them. I'm not sure in our next house, if we're going to have a place to store all of our boxes, we're going to have to wait and see what it looks like.

[00:30:23] Speaker: But you know, keep your boxes. And then another huge thing that we has been awesome for us, is the this was a tip I shared it a while ago on Instagram is the bubble mailers that you get if you're a huge Amazon shoppers like I am the bubble mailers that you get a lot of your stuff in I've been saving those for like months like we've got Quite the stack and those are awesome for sliding pictures into Little tchotchke things you can slide that right in there fold it over and that's nice and padded So I've been using that a lot which has been really good.

[00:30:58] Speaker: And then again as we're moving I'm gonna share Some on Instagram, but I've been using box ops this time and it is really really good for Keeping identifying the different rooms and again the more clean you can be up front the better Your move is gonna go on the unpack side. So I will share more of that later But okay.

[00:31:21] Speaker: Well, I got to go get Sophia from her From her appointment. So that's all I'm gonna share today. I will You I'll check back in with you guys soon. We're going to be doing, I'm going to do a couple of episodes. I had a request for budgeting, so I'm going to work on that for the next couple of episodes. And then yeah, keeping you up to speed.

[00:31:43] Speaker: We're six weeks from our, from our ditty. So it's, you know, chaos and more chaos. All right. Until next time.