My husband and i will be PCSing in a couple months and im in need of advice. This is our first pcs so any general advice would be awesome. I had a couple questions about the move. We got told we can only stay at a hotel that costs less than 50 a night, does that seem right? Where can you rent a hotel for that. Also were going to have to ship one of our cars does any one have any reccomendations for a company. Ipac said dla was based off having 2 cars and that is what pays for the move. I have looked online and saw different. So im confused now. Also were looking for an apartment north of base that is dog friendly, any reccomendations? Sorry for all the questions. 

Well I can tell you a year ago we stayed at the cheapest places we could and they were all around $100/night and we drove 2 cars. I dont remember how much we got reimbursed but they gave us but we were never told we had to stay at a certain place under a certain amount or had to ship our vehicle. 

DLA is the dislocation allowance, it has absolutely nothing to do with two cars or one car. It's to help with rental deposits and such at your new location.

Just tell them you are driving two cars, if you tell them you are shipping one they will only pay mileage/travel for one. How it gets here is up to you. 

Have any of you don't the dity move? My husbands chain of command told his he should do it. Not to sure what to think, I have heard you can lose money or make money? I just don't want to lose money, and I want to get there safe with all my stuff. 

How much you make on a DITY depends on how much weight you have as you are paid per pound on top of the DLA and other travel monies. We moved something like 9-10,000 pounds out here last year and after expenses (rental truck, gas, food and hotels or camping) we cleared over $6000.00.

If it's just two of you and you don't have much, (under a two bedroom) I wouldn't do it. You might not get paid enough to cover all the expenses. 

DLA is to offset the increased costs of securing new housing and turning on utilities. It has nothing to do with the cars you own. It's set by rank and with or without dependents.

Hotel Per Diem is based off the zipcode. I'm pretty sure with a domestic PCS move you're entitled to either 5 or 10 days. Which can be broken up between either duty station. Whatever you do not use of the per diem for lodging will NOT be refunded but your food allowance you will get the entire amount even if you ate cup of noodles the entire day.

We made a LOT of money (in the thousands) on a dity move back in 2001. It was a lot of grunt work but this was before we had kids and my husband was away at RD school so I had nothing else to do with myself in 29 Palms but pack. We were also moving across the country to Florida. Fast forward 12 years later, it'd take a lot of reasons other than monetary for me to spend my time packing and moving ourselves. 

http://www.dfas.mil/pcstravel/milentitlements.htmlDFAS - PCS Travel information



http://www.dfas.mil/pcstravel/milentitlements/tle.htmlTemp Lodging Information  

Camp Pendleton's max per diem rate is 133 and another 66 for food.

http://www.defensetravel.dod.mil/site/perdiemCalc.cfm 

Last link - this will provide you with the figures for everything from DLA to the mileage for driving your cars.

http://www.defensetravel.dod.mil/site/travelreg.cfm 

You want the standard per diem rate, not Pendleton's. It's the same rate no matter where you are going stateside, whereas the bases Per Diems can vary based on local costs. Also that site does not seem to show the per diem rate for dependents which is 3/4? of the service members rate for an adult and then it goes down a bit more for any kids. Bottom line is you receive some money for every person in the family.

Also the hotel per diem *Running* refers to is called TLE or temporary lodging expense. It's a REIMBURSEMENT only (up to 10 days) for the hotel or lodging before or after the move and has to be requested separately. (The monies for hotels along the way are already included in the travel pay)

The rules on the TLE may have changed from using it on either end of the move. I seem to recall from last year that you can only use it before or after the move now. 

Garden is correct for the per diem. For TLE you'd rate the Camp Pendleton rate IF you used your 10 days here. If you used it at your previous duty station your lodging max would be for that duty station.

Standard rate is $123. Member would get $123 per day. Spouse and children older than 12 would get 75% (or 92.25). Children under 12 rate 50% (or 61.5) per day. First and last day of travel are all at prorated 75% rate of allowable. 

This is our last year at Pendleton and everything I hear about PCSing sounds like a nightmare. I better pay attention and hopefully when the times comes I'll be more prepared. Would be nice to have a change of scenery though. 

Thanks for all the advice guys, i guess i have to just jump right in there and hope for the best. My husband really wants to move ourselves hopefully we dont lose money! Last 3 times i drove across country we drove all the way through and didnt get a hotel so we will save money there if we do that again. 

Is there a class that spouses can go to, to get educated about PCS moves? 

There's the tmo class but that's just the class about the move to me it wasn't super helpful it just explained the paperwork process of the move not anything else... I know they say there relocation assistance I talked to them all they tried to do is talk me into living on base which won't happen... There could be another I don't know about but that's why I came on this site. :-) 

Wouldn't she get full per diem too because they're driving "seperately?" Or was it higher mileage rate for both? I just remember you got more for if you said you were driving desperately ( hah which we were)

We didn't do a dity, and still cleared over 3k only going nc to tx and we did a partial dity ( though my husband never turned in paperwork for what we hauled 1500lbs (insert annoyance) so it would have been more. We stayed in hotels of our choice, if you do the military per diem rate you can get a room under 100 easily unless looking for 4 star. I love to use priceline(name your own price) and if we stay in larger metro cities can get a 4 star hotel for $68-75, but typically go for 2.5 star if the whole family is going for $45-55 (this is usually residence inns, country inn and suites, holiday inn express type hotels) our move we did two nights in those type of hotels, and one night of my birthday in a 4* we spent right at $200 for all 3 rooms. 

Also the tla- temp lodging allowance can only be use up to 10 days of your choice at your original PCs location or your PCs location. Its not paid up front, has to be used within 100(or maybe 50) miles of one of the locations. So its not what you use for driving through, its to cover when you hand over your keys to your house, but not leaving for awhile longer, or while you're trying to find a new place. This one you have to submit receipts for. It seemed to take us forever to get repaid for this. You can say you stayed at a friends, and then they will give you the meal portion amount of it. I think that was called mle (but I feel like I'm making up acronyms) 

If your hubs goes to ipac they will answer any and all questions about moving entitlements. The only thing tmo/dmo is the actual movement of items and reimbursement for weight.

I Arranged our whole move while my hubs was away at school, and I left AIPAC knowing exactly how much wed get paid the whole move. " you will get this much deposited in your account by this day." My person was helpful she showed me the breakdown as we went. Alse you're a loted a certain number of days to get from point a to point be (350 miles per day is where they get this number) to get max money you have to say it took that long. We were given 4 days. We took 3 days, but still got paid for 4 because we said it took us 4. So, if you drive straight through you'd bank every single day of per diem allotted for the trip, but when he checks in he has to say he took the max amount of days, if he says it took less, and they paid you for max amount; well...you now owe the government money. So, if you plan on using tla make sure you don't submit receipts for the same days you said you were traveling-they'll catch on because you can't receive both travel perdiem and tla for the same nights. 

Unfortunately when we went to ipac we went twice because the first time the guy said they ended dla and a few other things, he said we justify paid for distance of travel, then the second time this girl said oh you can look it all up online if your confused but basically just keep your receipt and she told my husband you get dla and then said well I hope that helped. They both didn't know anything and when we asked to talk to someone else they said they were busy and to come back lol so after try number 2 my husband just asked his chain of command and that's why I came on this site. 

oh wow, that's terrible. Does he have web orders yet? If he does tell him to print a copy and go down to ipac (again blegh) and tell them he needs to get his endorsements. That's pretty much what you fill out to get all your money(per diem, mileage, amount of travel days rated, dla, etc) squared away.

there is little boxes for each one of these things so make sure you check every box, the only one I think most people leave blank is advance pay (that would be an advance on his paycheck.)

When I did our move- had to get these for my hubs because tmo/dmo wouldn't talk to me without them. 

He did that he just requested dla and advance travel that's what his chain of command told him to do but no one was much help with the questions we had they just took a copy and that's it. 

Where are you PCS'ing to/from? If you do a dity move and have two cars you will have to tow one behind the Uhaul. Like others said, if you do not have a lot of stuff you could actually end up loosing or just breaking even! The cost of gas+ truck rental+ tow trailer alone adds up fast! We have done 2 dity moves but both were in the same state! There is a lot to factor in! :) I prefer dity because I like to pack my own crap and have it arrive with me! 

Ours was of course a couple years back, but I looked it up, and we got $123 for my husband and $123 for me, a night for me since we drove separately. Then of course our kids got an amount too. Gas I think was paid 23 cents per mile (for each cars) The copy should tell you how many travel days you were allotted to get to the location. If for some reason that isn't on there you can you mapquest as a rough estimate and divide the number of miles by 350- that will give you days rated.

Attempt to do a rough estimate, so you can figure out how much you have to spend on shipping your car, driving the one you have, and hotel stays.

Save all receipts we had 3 ziplock bags, one for TLE- which had one hotel at our original base, and a few nights when we got to our new base. We also threw in the food receipts from those areas those days (we read got conflicting info on that, so we just did it) The other baggy we kept gas receipts and weight tickets from the partial dity, always pay for gas seperately from food items. and lastly one for food and hotels stays on the trip.

Since my husband never turned in our partial dity paperwork the only receipts they requested were for the TLE, but it's good to have everything just in case.

Our advanced travel and DLA was deposited a couple days before the day we left. 

http://pcs.signalwarrant.com/