Back to Part 1 on how our move is going
Part 2 – PCSing with the military and house hunting
A standard move for the Army starts with orders that one tends to get 1-6 months notice on. Orders come down and they let you know where you are moving. In our case, Fort Gordon. Then the service member has briefings and paper work about many things, one of them is setting up the actual move with packers. The military will pick and pay a moving crew to come into your home and pack everything you own and put it all on a truck to (hopefully) be delivered to the new post. This happens hopefully not too soon before the move date and not too late to make the family have to rush clearing the home they are in. Often this means a family is without their “stuff” for days or weeks before the move. Sleeping on cots or sleeping bags in an empty home they are cleaning/painting before the move. The military has a few things they pay out for a dislocation allotment to help the family travel to the new post. Often this does not cover all the expenses though.
So where will the family live at the new location? They might be able to live on the next military post. There often though are long waiting lists for homes, meaning the family could be in a hotel for an extended time and often BAH and TDY for 10 days isn’t going to cover the cost for that. The family could move there, stay at a hotel and hope to find a place quick to move. We ourselves have done that. There are few stresses like it. Once a family does finally find a place to live they can ask for delivery of their household goods. We have waited over a month before for the delivery, living on cots on empty houses. There are things one can borrow from post militar lending closets but it is hard living like that for very long, especially with kids.
Issues with letting the military move you!
A few down sides to letting the military do the move is that packers are known to pack “everything” including peoples trash! Sometimes things are packed very poorly, things broken and it is not uncommon to hear about things missing or stolen. Over the government shut down last year a poor family was informed that all their items burned in a truck fire and because of the shut down they had to wait to get insurance money for it all even. Sadly too many loved items and photos are lost because of military moves.
So the other option is to move yourself. This is what we are again doing. We move our own things, if things break it is on us, and nothing should go missing. It takes work but the military will pay 95% to the service member of what they would pay a company to do the move, meaning if done right the service member could make a bit of money on the move. It is called a DITY “Do it yourself” or the now official PPM “Personally Procured Move”.
But if your going to move yourself, you pack the uhaul, and you go, if you don’t have a place to live lined up that could quickly turn into a disaster if you can’t find a home quickly right?
