A few months ago I used one last credit card to pay for the hotel and other re-imbursable expenses. After being tempted once to wait to pay off the balance when I received the re-imbursement, I realized I was playing with snakes. When you play with snakes, you will get bit. That snake was cut into tiny pieces.

I have to really watch my cash flow with the time of the month to make sure I have the money I need. It was almost like beefing up the baby emergency fund to make sure I can pay for the travel.

Many people that are hardcore on Dave Ramsey’s plan disagree with me here; but why have the temptation sitting around when you can just plan better and not chance it.

Last October I was a Sergeant for the Greene County Sheriff’s Department in Springfield, Missouri; Director of the Training Division. Simultaneously, I owned and somewhat operated (had a great manager that did most of the operating) my restaurant, The Lazy Susan. It was then that I was notified I was going to be mobilized with the Army Reserve and sent to Iraq upon completion of Officer Basic Course which I was scheduled to report to on October 30th. All the stuff that happened with the restaurant is covered in my story and other posts throughout the blog, so I will omit that here.

The officer basic course is at Ft. Jackson, South Carolina. This course is a four month TDY(temporary duty) course where we are put up in an Army hotel for officers, that in the case of Ft. Jackson was much nicer than most civilian hotels. When you are TDY, you have to pay all of your travel expenses, but are re-imbursed on a monthly basis (hotel, mileage, laundry, etc…). As part of your re-imbursement, you are given $44 dollars per day (more in some cities) for food. You are not required to actually spend that much in order to receive it; this is how the Army rewards you for not allowing you to be at home. They also pay more for mileage than you spend on gas and oil. Additionally, I receive a housing and susistence allowance for my family back home, and of course my base pay. Everything except the base pay is tax free.

While at officer basic I was notified that the unit I was supposed to go to Iraq with had deployed early to replace a Mississippi National Guard unit that was returning early. After completing officer basic, I signed up for a two month postal class for the Army, and spent those two extra months again on TDY at Ft. Jackson.

While in the Postal school I volunteered for mobilization. At the end of April I was notified that I was being cross-leveled (fancy term for transferred) to an Army Reserve unit in Ada, Oklahoma to support Operation Enduring Freedom (Can’t be much more detailed about that, but will say that Operation Iraqi Freedom supports Iraq, so Enduring Freedom is the other foreign operation we are involved in).

When I was originally sent down here, I was supposed to mobilize on August 2nd. For an unknown reason, it was pushed back into November. Currently I am in Ada, Oklahoma working on getting the unit ready to deploy. I am the Operations Officer/Executive Officer and am the individual responsible for preparing and executing all training, personnel and logistical issues. In the evenings, I work at Chili’s. I will keep doing the double duty until November.

While I was at Ft. Jackson, I worked at Texas Roadhouse in the evening. They have a really awesome system there, and I always made pretty good money. Being on TDY, and working the second job along with selling everything I can is what has allowed me to pay off over $70,000 in seven months. To be fair about that, $38,000 came from the bank ordered auction of my $190,000 worth of equipment. The other $32,000 was all work.

I hope that helps you understand a little more of how I got where I am.