How does DITY move work?

Question

My husband is an E-2. This is our first duty station. My son (almost 2) and I live near San Francisco. His duty station is 29 Palms (yea I know worst place ever lol). Would it be better to do a TMO or a DITY move I heard you can make some extra cash DITY. How does this work ?

Answer 1

http://www.military.com/Resources/Resour...

I would do a DITY if you only have a bed and table. Read the link above and you will see why.

But if you decide TMO, then the link below has a graph of the allowance available based on pay grade.

http://usmilitary.about.com/od/assignmen...

Answer 2

I am with baam, but mrsjvb is right too.  If you don’t own much you can do it yourself.  My last move was 10,000 lbs, after the yard sale and giving things away, and I didn’t want to do that myself.  You need to contact your local TMO office to set up your move either way.  You can do it or your husband can do it in 29 Palms.  You will have to weigh the truck, u-haul, or whatever empty, and then loaded.  You will need to set up the u-haul, I would go u-haul since they have one in 29 Palms on base so that you can return the truck.  Do your research though, with current gas prices you might just break even.  Your husband will probably get two days of travel since it is a 15 hour drive, so you will get paid for this and you get something like .35 cents per mile (it has been a long time, but you will get the exact mileage in the brief) for the uhal and if you drive the other vehilce.    Your husband will not be able to request leave to help until he checks into his new unit unless he can work something out at the school.  So you might have to do it on your own if you want to hurry up and get down there.  Here is the contact info for Travis AFB, it is a starting point for you and you can talk to a real person.  If you husband has a copy of his orders, he can ask his class instructors for some assistants with this.  No promises, he might find someone kind enough to help.

Contact Information

60th AIR MOBILITY WING (AMC)

Office of Public Affairs, Travis Air Force Base, Calif. 94535

[phone]

Ok, now here is the kicker.  Do not expect to be reimbursed right away and there are some new travel regulations that have just come out this past year that you may need to look into.  When you get to 29 Palms your husband will have to file a travel claim.  If he is not in the new system, this could take awhile.  It is supposed to be settled in 10 working days, but that just never happens.  Try to stay away from any advances, money given to you that you would have gotten in the end, at all cost.  Yes, there are many options, but believe me it in the Corps and with the idiots in admin, it is better to stay away from an advance.  If you have to, be prepared for pay problems that will take awhile to resolve.  If you can do it out of pocket, I would.  

I have know people that have done a dity move and made out like a bandit, and I have know people that have done them and just broke even.  Go to the brief and learn.

Yes, 29 Palms is horrible, but not the worst place in the world to be stationed, but one of the top two.  Any duty station is what you make of it.  You are only going to spend 4 years there, I grew up there now that was bad.

Answer 3

if all of your worldly goods fit in the back of a small Uhaul.. going DITY is fine.

you must weigh the truck empty( with a full tank of gas), then again once it is loaded.  certain things cannot be in the truck when it is weighed full.. like you,the kids or the family dog.  

you will be paid 90% of what it would have cost the Marines to Move you.