Military Nesties
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.
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.
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.
When doing a DITY move...
where do people make money? This question just came up one a FB group I'm a part of and I honestly have no idea how to answer it. How do people make money doing a DITY move? Isn't it all just reimbursed like a TMO move?
Re: When doing a DITY move...
It's not the money-maker some people talk it up to be. Our last move was 3k miles. We rented a tiny Uhaul trailer to accomodate the stuff we knew we'd need right away (we already bought a house, so we wouldn't be living in TLF). I can't survive without a washer and dryer with three furry, mud prone dogs, so we packed those, three big dog crates, Joe's huge tool box, a real mattress and box spring, camping chairs, a rubbermaid tub of pantry items that we hadn't finished, a cooler for dog food, jugs of water, and a couple basic pots and pans.
We took two vehicles. Keep in mind he and I are both AD, so we both get the full mileage rates. Total, after our GTCs were paid, we made almost $1k. It's not a huge amount of money, but seeing as we needed all that stuff anyway, it wasn't so bad to drag it ourselves. There's no way a full DITY would be worth it to me. I do not have the patience to play Tetris in a moving truck with my husband.
You're the second person I've seen make that comparison this week. And I agree with you.
OP my impression on where the profit comes from is that certain elements (mileage for example) are calculated on a standard rate rather than reimbursing for actual expenses so if you're more efficient than the standard rate that's how you win.
I won't do a DITY ever, ever again. Not a full, anyway. Even if you make a little extra, the amount of hassle that goes into it and the anxiety is just not worth it. IMO.
We pretty much only made money on the per diem and the DLA. Which, you get per diem for travel days regardless if you move your stuff or they do, right?
I think we "made" like $100 or so on the actual move. Which does not compensate for the time and effort, IMO
I changed my name
That's a good question. We made over $3000 on the move out here (MO-CO). I have no idea how that's all calculated. Our neighbors moved from (MD-CO) and made well over $6000. They're doing a dity to CA the same week we're moving to NC. Currently we're doing a dity, but we'll see if that changes in the next week or so. Everyone we know that's done a dity has made quite a bit. Or so they say.
I'm not sure why some people make a lot and some don't make any.
I think you make less money on the move part than you used to. I remember making quite a bit from TX to NM. But not really as much NM to NC, even though we had a longer trip (meaning more per diem allowance). Two years' difference.
I changed my name
That's possible. It was 3.5 years ago. But I did just talk to a friend who just (last month) moved from MD-CA and they made $12K. I don't know the logistics, but I was floored.
$12K? I'd assume they defrauded the system.
28/100
LittleL 8/10/07
Baby E 11/27/10
Check out my makeup and reading blog:
Books and Beauty
From my understanding, the military pays you what they would have paid a contractor to move your stuff. So after you personally pay for the supplies to pack everything and the transportation of your stuff to the new destination, whatever your left with is your money- basically what you got paid for labor. Also, I'm pretty sure that any profit (what the govt. paid you minus expenses such as gas, truck rental fee, boxes, etc.) is taxable income.
We did a full DITY about 18 months ago and made about $4k after expenses moving 5,000 lbs. it made sense for us because we didn't have much stuff and a lot of it was already packed since we didn't use most of our wedding gifts and kept most of my things packed from before our wedding. I don't think you could pay me enough to do a full DITY now...
How on earth would anyone other than a colonel+ have enough household goods to make $12k?
The travel days would be calculated as one day per 350 miles. We'll guess about 2800 miles (MD to Travis AFB, as a random base), so eight travel days. Mileage is currently $0.23 per mile per vehicle. 2012 DLA is $2011.08 for E-5 and below. The government only pays a service member UP TO 95% of what they would pay a commercial van line to move the household goods (so the pay isn't based on a flat rate per pound, necessarily).
So without that dollar amount for household goods, we can figure $1288 for mileage (if they took two cars), plus $2011 for DLA, both of which they'd get even without the DITY. Add their hotels, meals, gas, and still, in order to get that number up to $12k, one of them would have to drive a semi, they'd have to sleep in it to save the lodging money, eat granola bars instead of meals, and manufacture their own biodeisel from corn instead of stopping at Shell.
Mileage rates do fluctuate, and I know the .23 per mile we're getting now is like half of what it was a few years ago. I think in 2009ish we were at something like .47.
My thoughts exactly. Holy cow.
Ahh... I'm sure you are right.
Do you know how the military determines what % they pay for the move?
No idea how they pulled that off, but that's a lot of money.
How would you defraud the system? You're only allowed a max weight per rank. I wouldn't thinking it would be possible, but I guess people are crafty.
Welllll, I had a client who packed cinder blocks.
I guess that would be an easy way to beat it. That sucks that people abuse it though.
Do you know if cars on trailers count as weight?
Okay, it makes sense that during a given 4-6 week time period, everyone would get the same percentage. I understand that different individuals/families would get paid different actual $ amounts based of number of lbs. and miles. Sorry if I didn't make that clear before. I wonder how the percentage is determined...
I changed my name
MH tells a story about some guy who bought a bunch of heavy stuff right before his move and then returned it all when he got to his destination. This guy ended up getting caught, though. Pretty stupid to end your career over something like that.
I'm pretty sure personally owned vehicles don't count, even if you are towing them.
That makes sense. Thanks J's hubby
When M left for BMT 4 years ago, his recruiter took me to Ft Leavenworth to get my mil id. On the way we were talking about PCSing and dity vs partial dity vs tmo move. He told me he always did dity's and the night before the move he'd buy sand bags to load down the truck. At that point I didn't understand what he was telling me. I was shocked when I figured it out.
Sorry, I misunderstood. No, I have no idea how that is calculated.