Originally Posted by
kevin18
Spoken like an officer who wasn’t living paycheck to paycheck with mouths to feed. It’s a helluva lot more than a hiccup to many who are scared of not getting a paycheck. Yeah, I saw plenty of them in 22 years, it’s disgusting political posturing that hurts no one but the constituents.
Yep. I remember when there was a shutdown when I was an HT3, taking home maybe $800 twice a month with BAH. Yeah. There's no making people understand those who came from nothing, had nothing and then had to magically pay rent with zero income. Hard to have much savings when rent, utilities and food take 3/4 of your take home.
Hell, even my fist couple years as an Officer was tight. My take home with BAH and flight pay as an O-1E was like $1400 twice a month and student loans ate $1250 of that and rent + utilities (no cable, just power/water and a phone) for a crappy studio apartment in Corpus Christi was another $700 before I ate, bought gas or paid car insurance on my then 15 year old POS pickup truck.
Of couse the USNA grads looked at me because I balked at $400 wardroom assessment for some crazy party they wanted to throw.