Originally Posted by
Herkflyr
You are correct...but ultimately the math takes a back seat to personal benefit. So I'm at -30 right now. Yes, I will now have to repay it at a "higher" rate, but taking the hours out when I did proved mighty useful at the time (I bought a bunch of vacation days, and I used them to great personal advantage). It was what I needed at the time and I would do it again in a heartbeat. The fact that some get all wrapped around the numerical calculations is beside the point. The fact is that some of us go negative, and others stay positive for long stretches of time. Use the bank to your personally-defined good use and forget the rest.
All good points. Also, it's not always a straight 1:1 when you keep in mind that up to 5 hours can be used to reach the GS trigger, so sometimes 5 hours of bank time can actually yield 10 hours of pay if that's what got you to the trigger.
Personally anytime I'm over 80 credit (nearly impossible to do in a CQ or VAC month without killing yourself) I shove every minute I can into the bank. The QOL flexibility is nice to have, and as someone else pointed out, it's a lot easier to get time out of the bank than to put it in.