I love rewards credit cards!

[amaristella]

Would that be more for use in the field? Or daily use so that you have something you're allowed to carry?

[killercupcake]

Is that the giant bag that air crew always uses? It looks kind of like H's.

[audette]

Bug out bags!

I used to use DH's old one for my carryon when travelling for work. It could fit _so_ much!

Except, then I noticed that it "randomly" was selected for chemical screening a whole lot... I now use a different backpack for my carryon...

[Deleted]

That is cool.

[audette]

I noticed it after a while, it took a hefty chunk of trips for me to realize it wasn't quite normal...

With a different backpack, I only really get pinged about once a year for a chemical sniff on my carryon. It was happening every few trips with the bugout bag.

[audette]

Jan 20, 2015 21:59:01 GMT -5 Stan said:

Jan 20, 2015 21:53:02 GMT -5 audette said:

I noticed it after a while, it took a hefty chunk of trips for me to realize it wasn't quite normal...

With a different backpack, I only really get pinged about once a year for a chemical sniff on my carryon. It was happening every few trips with the bugout bag.

Well, plusalso they know I'm a godly 'Merican whilst you are a socialist foreigner.

Erm, some of the scans were in places other than the US...  Surely being a Canuck would have helped me out in places like Britain... 

[audette]

Jan 20, 2015 22:12:48 GMT -5 Stan said:

Jan 20, 2015 22:11:37 GMT -5 audette said:

Erm, some of the scans were in places other than the US...  Surely being a Canuck would have helped me out in places like Britain...

Bah. We have the goodwill of the world. Don't we?! DON'T WE?!

Hah!  Not like Canucks...  We're basically _everyone's_ little kid brother.  *grin*

[kpol]

This seems like a good place to mention that Amex will waive their annual fees on all of their cards as long as the service member is the primary card owner. They also waive the fee for additional cards for authorized users.

The platinum card offers free Priority Pass and a $200 airline incidental reimbursement per calendar year. The annual fee is $450 but completely waived for military. Whee!!

[Dory1988]

The black backpack they issued us in boot camp blows so a lot of people bought that one at Corps School but I was too poor due to our BAH to rent ratio. Most of my paycheck went to helping maintain the house in 29 when his BAH went down like $500. Anyway, I'm jealous of your snazzy backpack. Those are the nice ones.

[audette]

Jan 21, 2015 13:16:19 GMT -5 Stan said:

Jan 21, 2015 6:58:10 GMT -5 Dory1988 said:

The black backpack they issued us in boot camp blows so a lot of people bought that one at Corps School but I was too poor due to our BAH to rent ratio. Most of my paycheck went to helping maintain the house in 29 when his BAH went down like $500. Anyway, I'm jealous of your snazzy backpack. Those are the nice ones.

Preach. After not paying me BAH for 6 months, they overpaid me by a grand in my lump payment. And have been taking it a little at a time. My drill pay has been $40 since I came back.

Ever notice how it can take _months_ to resolve a pay issue when they aren't paying you enough, but you can measure in hours how long it takes to remedy the situation if you have been overpaid?

Frustrating...

And, sometimes it never gets fixed when they owe you money, no matter how much you work at it.    We're never going to see the CSP for Korea...

[audette]

Jan 21, 2015 21:02:14 GMT -5 Stan said:

Jan 21, 2015 19:45:21 GMT -5 audette said:

Ever notice how it can take _months_ to resolve a pay issue when they aren't paying you enough, but you can measure in hours how long it takes to remedy the situation if you have been overpaid?

Frustrating...

And, sometimes it never gets fixed when they owe you money, no matter how much you work at it.    We're never going to see the CSP for Korea...

Look, I love the Army and all, but they seem to be worse at this than the USMC. Obviously the sheer population is much larger, but still. Stop making other branches look so good! I'm sorry about your CSP (which is not an acronym I know the way you're using it which feels weird, lol). It's always lovely to know that even ranking up will not help the FUBAR of finance. 

Yay!  I win the acronym game! 

CSP = command sponsorship pay.  It's supposed to be $300/month during our time in Korea.  Over $7k.  Yep.  I'm still not over it.  We've exhausted all avenues to pursue it.  Apparently, because they stopped offering to folks _while_ we were here, and well after we made our first half dozen attempts to get it, our later attempts to get it don't matter.

Korea really has been one giant FU to us.  I've enjoyed the whole "being in Korea" aspect of it.  I've despised the whole "army in Korea" shit...  I'm really looking forward to being able to leave.  Soon.  Hopefully.

[kpol]

Jan 21, 2015 21:11:29 GMT -5 audette said:

Jan 21, 2015 21:02:14 GMT -5 Stan said:

Look, I love the Army and all, but they seem to be worse at this than the USMC. Obviously the sheer population is much larger, but still. Stop making other branches look so good! I'm sorry about your CSP (which is not an acronym I know the way you're using it which feels weird, lol). It's always lovely to know that even ranking up will not help the FUBAR of finance. 

Yay!  I win the acronym game! 

CSP = command sponsorship pay.  It's supposed to be $300/month during our time in Korea.  Over $7k.  Yep.  I'm still not over it.  We've exhausted all avenues to pursue it.  Apparently, because they stopped offering to folks _while_ we were here, and well after we made our first half dozen attempts to get it, our later attempts to get it don't matter.

Korea really has been one giant FU to us.  I've enjoyed the whole "being in Korea" aspect of it.  I've despised the whole "army in Korea" shit...  I'm really looking forward to being able to leave.  Soon.  Hopefully.

Did you guys AIP? We get the $300 AIP $$ but to my knowledge there's no such thing as CSP $$. Unless that's something specific to your location.

Also, I'm on my phone at work but there was an NPR article maybe a year or so ago that talked about how outdated the military pay system is and only has a mechanism to automatically catch overpayments and no such mechanism at all to catch underpayements. If you personally don't catch the pay mistake, you'll likely never see any of it.

Eta: found it www.npr.org/2013/07/16/202360167/investigation-reveals-a-military-payroll-rife-with-glitches

[audette]

I've heard it called AIP, but AIP also seems to mean something you get for voluntarily extending your assignment in Korea - we just did the 2 year (plus a bit due to annoying paperwork). At least, that's my understanding. I could easily be confused.

I generally let DH handle the pay issues. I've got the POA's to do it myself, but he prefers to do it himself. For this, I don't think I could have done any better than him - he pursued it multiple times, again and again, but finance up here in our area is fucked up - they've admitted that finance is fucked up. But, apparently that doesn't mean they'll admit fault on things like this.


Frankly, after dealing with the shitty, shitty people/processes/stupidity here, I'm done. I'm so flipping fed up with all things army, and so freaking soured on it that I am _ecstatic_ that DH is now looking at getting out soon. No private company could pull this shit and actually still be in business. It's fucking ridiculous.