MilitaryToFinance

They said I could keep the vehicle but I wouldn't get anywhere near $6,500 from them for it if I did. The $6,500 is based on them taking ownership and selling it to a salvage yard. If you keep the car they can't do that, so they will pay you a much smaller settlement amount.

Just wanted to bump this thread and give my props to USAA insurance. My 1997 Toyota 4Runner with 218,000 miles on it lost a fight with a guardrail during one of our recent snow storms in Colorado. It got towed to the shop for free and was going to get repaired. The claims folks were great about getting me set up with a rental car, covering the towing, etc. Turns out there is more damage than originally noticed so now USAA is totalling the car instead of repairing it. After taking out my deductible they're paying me $6,500 for the car which is far more than I could possibly get for it selling it myself. All in all not a bad deal. They are being very accommodating especially considering I am TDY right now and can't be there to sign any papers or work with the shop the car is sitting at.

There are a lot of assumptions and terrible advice in this thread. When the market is crappy that is exactly the time to buy. There are numerous markets out there where buying makes a lot of sense. My mortgage payment, property taxes and HOA dues all total up to less than what it would cost me to rent the same place each month. It is a fallacy to think that you will always pay less by renting. I would strongly urge people to not take financial advice from this forum.

I had the same concerns when I bought mine. But then I decided it wouldn't be all that bad if they broke it anyways. After 3 years an excuse to get a newer, better tv because they busted the old wouldn't pain me too much.

TSA 2011 Newest Calendar

Now if only they would stop playing high school teams and play real colleges we could see if they're any good.

If you are paying for it on your GTC it is not contract lodging, period. They don't bother to actually teach the idiots who work at the desk what the regs say.

You can stay anywhere you want. They try to do the same thing at Vandenberg and I always go to the Embassy Suites at full per diem and have never been hassled by my finance people.

Thanks for the input. Sounds like I shouldn't rule it out based on location and it's not as bad as it sounds. The job would definitely be a good one but I think I need to try to get down there and visit first to see the area.

I searched the forum and found a lot about Clovis and Cannon AFB but that was it for New Mexico. It's probably a long shot but has anybody lived in the Las Cruces, NM area? I'm looking at my next assignment being there but I'm not sure how I feel about moving to New Mexico. I've never really been there before so I don't have much basis for my prejudice but it is definitely not high on my list of places I think I want to live. So if anybody does know the area, how good/bad would it be for a 26 year old guy with no family?

At what point can you put down that you are BAC+? I'm not sure I plan on staying career military so I don't feel like wasting my time on a bullsht degree right now just to check the box for Major. But if I could take a few classes to at least say I'm at the "Bachelor's plus" area maybe my supervisor will stop pestering me every few months about getting started on my masters. I assume you have to take more than just a single course but I'm not really sure.

Just out of curiosity, what is your relationship to the WEdge program?

Actually what he said was a pretty common phrase. You've seriously never heard that before?

What would we do without FG?

This is the greatest news I've seen in a long time. In all my visits to OSD we've consistently had headaches and complaints from people at NII who think they are experts but don't have a clue.

M2 is actually wrong here. The instructions are clear and you do NOT need to list your mortgage and USAA loan. It explicitly says, "If you answered Yes on the previous page..." You answered No to every question. Read the directions in their entirety and things should be pretty clear on the forms. I'll second what DFRESH said. I just went through this and got my clearance a month ago. I did not list any of my debts because none of them qualified under the list of questions.

I'm sorry but I just can't let this go. The stock market, even if you're buying the Wilshire 5000 broad index fund, is not a low-risk investment. High quality bonds, US Treasuries and CD's are low risk investments. Good luck earning more than 4% these days on safe investments. Sure I'm heavily invested in the stock market because I'm still young and have a long timeframe. But try to tell the people who are retiring now that their stocks are a low risk investment. You know, those people who lost 50% of their portfolio value in 18 months. I have no problems with a diversified portfolio balance including equities, bonds and real estate but part of the reason we have these bubbles and busts is unrealistic expectations. You should not expect to make 12% year over year without taking on significant risks. To think otherwise is just building up unattainable expectations.

Sorry but there is no such thing as low-risk 10-12% annual return. Period.

Not if you are going to lose it regardless. I'm not referring to selling back terminal leave. The bill was giving you the ability to sell leave at any time to convert it into a TSP investment. Outside of Christmas time I haven't taken any leave so it would be nice to sell back use-or-lose leave.

Anybody seen the legislation being bounced around in Congress about allowing folks to sell back unused leave and deposit it into their TSP account? Sounds like an interesting idea to me. I don't seem to manage to take 30 days of leave in a year so I wouldn't mind being able to cash some in if possible and if it was a good deal.

At least 5 people I work with are members at Villasport. They love it although I can't bring myself to pay $75/month for a gym when I get one for free on base. Even if the one on base sucks.

Peterson AFB just opened them up today. Facebook, photobucket, youtube, all available on NIPR now.

Just finished the Basic Rider Course. Now I have to wait 10 hours in line at the DMV to get my endorsement.

I travel about every two weeks TDY for my job on commercial airlines. I'm not always in uniform but a lot of times I am because I'm either coming directly from a meeting to the airport or heading to a meeting from the airport. In all the flights I've been on I was only upgraded once because I was in uniform and it was the 20 minutes flight from C. Springs to Denver. Personally I'd rather be more comfortable in civilian clothes than get a 1/10000 chance of being upgraded for free.