Twitter
Facebook
Due to a stronger U.S. dollar, military personnel stationed in the KMC will
experience a decrease in their cost-of-living allowance.
Effective Sept. 1, the Office of the Secretary of Defense level Per Diem, Travel and Transportation Allowance Committee changed the rate COLA is paid at from €0.62 per dollar (overpayment of COLA given the current exchange rate of 0.66) to €0.6751 per dollar (underpayment of COLA).
The Per Diem Committee intentionally under/overpays servicemembers COLA throughout the year in order to provide pay stability, with the over/underpayments averaging out throughout the course of the year.
How will the change affect you? Effective Sept. 1, COLA rates dropped by 15 percent for all military members. To find your new daily COLA rate, visit the Per Diem Committee’s Web site at http://perdiem.hqda.pentagon.mil/perdiem/ocform.html and enter your specific information, like time in service and number of dependents.
For example, the daily COLA payment for an E-5 living in the KMC, with 10 years of service and three dependents decreased from $32.22 a day to $27.39 a day.
Your Overseas Housing Allowance dollars will also be affected, although in a more
indirect way. OHA rates, which are delineated in euros, are not changing, but the rate used by the Per Diem Committee to compute COLA is also used to convert your OHA euros to dollars.
The new COLA rate means that the number of OHA dollars you will receive will be about 8.2 percent less in September than what it was in August. For example, an E-5 with dependents receives a max OHA of €1,794 for housing and utilities in both August and September. In August, those €1,794 converted to $2,893.54, and in September they will convert to $2,657.38 – a reduction of $236.16.
The 435th Comptroller Squadron is providing this information via the KA and through command channels in order to prepare servicemembers for the reduction.
It’s important to make changes to your spending patterns now so you are not caught short when your mid-month pay hits your account Sept. 15.
