Well, when it rains it pours and this is your public service announcement that it PAYS to be transparent.
My co-worker and I were chatting today about pay and issues and frustrations (mostly he’s trying to convince me to NOT return to the states in January)… and I was like “hum… nope, I make more in the states”… which lead to other discussions about COLA and all that… to which I said I don’t think I’m authorized COLA as I have never gotten it. He was shocked and started to doing research (because, why not, right?) Turns out after asking G-1 (personnel) on site… am I supposed to be getting this? NOW FLASH back to the idiot who on-boarded me and you will NOT be shocked at the screwed up stuff that has been done, or more accurately NOT been done for me over the last 2.5 years…
So… bottom line? I SHOULD be getting COLA… I have NOT. COLA should be anywhere from $300+ a month. What the HECK people??? SO, for 2.5 years I have NOT been receiving this money…. At all. The person who should have done this for me naturally when I transitioned from my temporary housing to full time housing was, you guessed it, the SAME person who failed to put my housing allocations at the amount they should have been and instead put me in for full rates. Yeah, that person. SO. The good news is it looks like this amount is owed to me for 2.5 years. The bad news is that if you don’t know what to ask, you can get royally screwed.
I’ll be ever so grateful to the folks who ARE helping me but I wouldn’t spit on the others if they were on fire at this point… seriously – who does this to people’s finances without a care in the world? Who could remove that person from that job and NOT go back through the jobs he had “completed” prior to his departure to make sure they were all good??? CRAZY I tell you. Good news on this end as well is that this will offset the supposed debt that I have with DFAS as well…..
Now to find out what sort of screwed up algorithm they are using that had me paying back a debt (that I supposedly agreed to as it states voluntary) in JANUARY. It was only $85 but come ON DFAS…. What are you DOING??? I am seriously questioning personnel in this chain of command for pay. They are jacked up!!
Well, I have always said this blog would be the good/bad/ugly of my life… and there is no reason to exclude this “fun” that I have had for the last 5 weeks.
When we came back from vacation I was greeted with debt letters from DFAS (Defense Finance Accounting Service). OK… I knew I was going to have some debt from doing the reconciliation from my housing. It was inevitable as I had estimated my yearly cost would be: $32,720 per year and the reality (according to MY math) was: $29,321. So I expected a debt of roughly $7,000. Yep, got it, no issues. I open the letters to find that DFAS states I owe them $21,000. NOPE there is not a mistaken zero in there. I FREAKED out. I contacted my personelist who put me in touch with who I was to work with… but first, let’s talk about HOW this huge “awh, shit” can happen.
When I came here I knew I would have to do this estimate stuff… I submitted my paperwork to our personnel office and went on my merry way. Estimates are based on months, pay is based on 2 weeks, and my brain quite literally shuts down with presented with math after chemo. It’s a weird phenomenon that is going on, but it is what it is. I cannot do math in public (OR private). I ASSUME folks area actually doing the job they are hired to do. Apparently NOT. Fail number 1
Fail number 2 was when I hit one year, I reached out to my G1 – personnel shop and said “I’m ready for reconciliation”… I was told someone would reach out to me. They did NOT. I waited and reached out again… nope, told someone would reach out to me. NOPE… So I started to research on my own… found the site, found the forms and submitted. Come to find out it was NOT the right spot, but by dang it, they pushed me to the right person (why didn’t SHE contact me???) and so the process started. The first part of idiocy begins… remember I have submitted bills for the year…. Then I’m told that I don’t have the right bills. I have to have a full year of bills. Germany bills some things annually and if you get her in January this really throws stuff off. I’m told to wait. Keep in mind that they have ALL of my paperwork, bills, etc.. They never say “you are WAY off, let’s adjust this now to cover you until you get your full bills,” NOPE, they just let it compound and compound… until a get my full bills at the end of the calendar year and beyond (months). After the fact I’m met with “well, you could adjust this at any time. HOW is someone to know this if they are not told? I did all of my due diligence to resolve this time and time again and was met with very unhelpful people. It’s always “well, you should have known”… exactly how is someone supposed to KNOW these things if they have NEVER lived overseas with civil service in the past?
So the estimate, apparently was never USED. They were giving me max benefits. Yeah, that is a receipt for disaster as you can see. So. We dicker back and forth on the amounts that H (personnelist) is using for my rent. My total rent is 27,100 per year. So, wait it gets better… that is NOT all reimbursable We used the base contracting office to ensure we were doing all the right things when renting a house here in Germany and they were to go over the contract with us and explain all the nuances of the paperwork. Well, they glossed RIGHT over the non-reimbursable items on the rent and now just state “well, you signed it.” Well no SHIT because you didn’t say “do you realize this means that $300 per YEAR will NOT be reimbursable?” to which I would have gone looking for a new house or re-negotiated the contract. I mean come on… really? So – fail #3 on the road to misery.
I had to get with the landlord, who also had no clue what the requirement would be for providing the bills to us annually would mean… so they weren’t briefed on this either. Yeah, effective, don’t you think? So, I finally get copies of the property tax (the ONLY reimbursable item of three from the contract) and get that added into the mix…. But I digress. So, the debt letters come to me in three different letters saying they will dock my pay at a rate of $250 EACH per pay period. Excuse me???? I call DFAS (1.5 hours on HOLD) and tell them there is a problem with the math on these letters, there is a problem overall with these letters and I need to get this worked out. They tell me I need a ticket. OK, can you enter a ticket for me? No, they have to have a service rep do that… there is no service rep listed for my area. They have no CLUE who can enter a ticket for me. Perhaps my time keeper? I ask through email MULTIPLE times for SOMEONE/ANYONE to enter a ticket for me. Care to guess if I have a ticket??? I DO NOT.
So, I continue with the back and forth with H regarding this mess. I keep trying to explain to her (after finally PULLING the information from her and a call to housing to explain the damn contract) WHAT is different in what I think is my rent (it says TOTAL rent for crim-a-nutly) and what THEY say my rent is. Lord save me from unhelpful people!! Then we move onto the OTHER smooth move DFAS pulled. They added $6500 into my paycheck in a lump sum right smack in the middle of all this – the middle of April while we’re working out what my debt total is. This, in turn, adds more muck to the discussion as now H is including that in her calculations and telling me, “no, the calculations are right, you owe that amount”.
UGH!! Problem is this:
Debt letters: I cannot sign and return the debt letters as is as they are not showing the same calculations you (Hs) show in your reconciliation.
DFAS total debt (letters) for PPE 2/16/2019 – PPE 4/10/2021: $21,975.32
YOUR total debt for 2/16/2019 – PPE 4/10/2021: $15,199.76
2019: DFAS shows $8556.74
Your calculations show $5,932.12
2020: DFAS shows: $10,077.48
Your calculations show $6,949.74
2021: DFAS shows $3,341.
Your calculations in the sheets sent shows $2,317.00
One would think this would clarify it all, right? There is a spreadsheet that she sent me that shows these totals for the timelines indicated. Note the PPE (Pay period ending) is 4/10/21
What does she key in on?
NOT the pay periods… She continually loops in the lump sum payment on 4/24/21 that I do NOT have a debt letter for. AND tells me in no uncertain terms her calculations are not HER calculations but DFAS’s calculations.
So, fun times. This is about the time I found out that I could do a formal request for a hearing. WTF? This is at day 35 from the debt letter dates. FAIL number FOUR. Why? I had 30 days to respond with a formal petition for a hearing… and 45 days when overseas. ARE YOU KIDDING ME??? Not one of these people told me I could formally petition DFAS to iron this out they simply kept repeating “you owe that total”… again – reference the table above… the debt letters do NOT include 4/24 – so, NO I don’t… and I added up the columns for each of the “years” and that’s some freaking creative math because the math I had was $15,xxx NOT $21.xxx. Using the columns provided by supposedly DFAS. So – you can see why I have an issue signing a debt letter that starts off with “I acknowledge and accept the debt as state” I do NOT!!!
So when did personnel start working for DFAS and NOT personnel? Aren’t they supposed to be here to help personnel???
No matter what I do,these photo's load backwards, so this is looking towards the front door from the back of the house.... nice stained glass.
Each of these rooms has a closet off of it... so the kitchen uses one for the fridge and the dining room has it punched through to the kitchen for a walk through - smart move during renovations later in this houses life.
while in town I took Angela's car to have the oil changed (she doesn't adult well) and found that the oil cap was MISSING. Yep, just gone. I got that replaced, oil done AND made her register it and got the title turned over to her, so this is now officially HER car. Considering she had not registered it last year I was a little scared because there was ALSO a brake light out... so here I am driving round with a brake light out AND it's not registered... sigh. That child!!
Sunday was Mothers Day so we went to brunch at the Gabbie Mon Ami Gabi - it was delicious!!
For those NOT in the loop Butch is boat obsessed and America's Great Loop obsessed. So we are looking at boats. We went to the marina in FWB however they do NOT have any larger boats. They pointed us to the one in Pensacola, so we dutifully went there to see boats - only to be greeted with boat - singular. AND not the boat we would want as she's not a trawler, she's a party boat. NOT what we want. We want a boat which can go on open seas AND be a like a house boat that can travel well in said open seas.
I took quite a few pictures at the airport when we were leaving for the next leg of our trip to Vegas to meet up with the girls.
BUT the leg from ATL to Vegas we were in FIRST class - lucky us!!
First class "snack box"
the one and only picture we took the whole four days we were in DC. Why? We were busy talking and visiting and relaxing!
The fun fact is that R&D were in the process of packing their house to move to South Carolina. They were a bit leery to tell us that they were moving as they didn't want to scare us off from the visit! We would have visited regardless.... but maybe gotten out of their hair a bit by staying at a hotel if needed.
It was such a fun time catching up and visiting with them!
I told NO one I was traveling, so if you didn't hear from me it's because we had such limited time. If you see my schedule you WILL question this as we had a few days at each spot, but if you lived in my shoes, you will discover this was not NEARLY enough
The flight to the states I paid for the upgrade to comfort. It was nice to have the extra leg room on the trip. The plane was EMPTY. Comfort had Butch, Me and ONE other soul on board. It was nice, but really not necessary on the daylight flight... but I digress
