Wow, I just took a serious pay cut.
I expected it. whenever you change duty stations it affects your pay. But looking at my Leave and Earnings statement today I realize…I’m going to be paid around just under $1,000 less than I was in Germany.
The funny thing is the COLA (Cost of living Allowance) I got there was due to the lack of US facilites nearby. But because there were less facilities I spent less money than I probably would have in the first place. Something that costs 100 euros could very well be 160 in dollars according to the exchange rate and all. So I didn’t go all hog wild with money. Yeah, we spent cash on things we didn’t need to buy, mostly DVD sets because we just wanted 'em. We did take trips all over Europe, etc. But they were relatively cheap considering we were in Europe.
And then I only filled the car around once a month because everything was close by. Plus my wife was working so I never had to give her money for anything. Since I paid all of our household bills she could do whatever she wanted with her check. I guess its to our benefit that while we didn’t wring our hands over money, we didn’t go out and make really dumb purchases. (plasma TVs? Nope, didn’t need it, so we didn’t buy it. Fancy jewelry? Nope. the most we spent cash on was a home stereo system)
This move cost me a bundle. We easily spent a few grand just in the first few weeks of getting to the US. (hotel, housing for us and the cats, keeping in mind the gov’t doesn’t pay to fly your pets so I paid 550 bucks for each cat to fly…and we have 3 cats, general household stuff like utensils and food, etc.) Luckily for us my wife did save a bit of cash on her own and so did I so we weren’t broke or anything. Also I do get reimbursed for some expenses. But as I looked at my pay now I thought “Man, I make enough to keep us okay until she finds a job, but we’re gonna have to be a lot more frugal now.”. We’ll be doing the coupon thing again, I see. (we used to but stopped when I was a recruiter. I was hardly ever home so really, I didn’t eat there too much. And I was reimbursed for meals I had while at work. It wasn’t a whole lot, more geared for being able to afford fast food…and since I don’t like fast food that much I just ate enough to keep alive and kept the rest)
I worry about folks with kids…how do they do it? I often grumble about our grocery bills and I only have to feed two humans and three cats.