well hun even if you look at it this way, you do a job worth what? 50-80,000 a year in the civilian market? you have the training to do something that could give us a comfy life and instead we have to scrounge for x-mas money. i think the dod budget should include raises. ppl like you sign years of your life, if not the whole thing in the case of war, away to struggle monetarily with a family. it's bull, that's what it is.

and being deployed to a hazardous/combat zone is worth exactly $150 a month, plus $3.50 a day if you are deployed, and not on a permanent assignment somewhere (I spent a year in Kuwait, and recieved the hazardous fire $$, but not teh $3.50 a day, because I was stationed there, not on a deployment). not much money to leave your family behind for 6 months at a time.