Military Nesties
HisChamaoleGirl
member
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Bonus: How to spend?
If you or SO received a bonus for enlisting or re enlisting, how did you spend it? Did you just use it as extra "fun" money or did you set it aside for a specific purchase or goal?
BFP #1 11/07/2012 EDD 07/09/2013 M/C 11/22/2012
BFP #2 02/05/2013 EDD 09/19/2013
Re: Bonus: How to spend?
My first re enlistment bonus was put towards buying a car (didnt own one at the time) and into a savings account.
DH and I werent planning on receiving a bonus for re enlisting, but our deployed status offered us a small bonus each. But who's going to complain about "free" money anyways? We were planning on re enlisting anyways so the extra bonus was a pleasant surprise. We both put half of our bonus towards our home savings account and the other half is going to be used for a trip/vacation to see SS.
BFP #2 02/05/2013 EDD 09/19/2013
That is good advice! This past deployment covered most of our debt and due to budgeting the rest of it will be paid off by the end of Dec.
BFP #2 02/05/2013 EDD 09/19/2013
The Dogs and Us
His last bonus went toward paying off his CC and buying a few anniversary gifts. Luckily we're debt free so if he gets a bonus this upcoming reenlisment it will probably just go into savings and IRA.
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We paid off our debt, bought a new tv for our house and put some into savings...
DH's last reenlistment bonus we used to finish paying off 2 of our cars, our motorcycle and made lump sum payments to our student loans. He was deployed at the time and had always wanted a dirt bike so we purchased one of those also before he came home. I also used quite a bit for travel and taking time off for when a close friend was KIA while DH was still deployed. While we obviously did not plan to spend the money on that, we were glad we had the money and didn't have to pull it out of other savings since I had to take off so much time without pay. We also finally took our honeymoon! We did quite a bit actually with the last bonus actually.
This was our idea. We have savings already, but it was financially not smart to put the entire lump sum into savings when we still had car payments and student loan payments with higher interest rates than our savings.
C has missed the re-enlistment bonuses for his AFSC by a matter of months EVERY time. But if he ever got so lucky, our plans would be similar to yours.
I'd max out Roth IRAs first, then pay off any debt, then invest. Honestly, I'm not a big "fun money" person...when we want to have fun or buy something we just do it rather than separate our money out into "pots."
I am getting a bonus in March and I can't wait. :-)