Pay Help?

[KaraLyn]

Okay so pay works a little differently than it does with the Guard... So I have a few questions and my father in law was no help...

1) If you are paid on (for example) Feb 15th, is the pay period Feb 1st - Feb 15th? or is it two weeks behind like.... on Feb 15th you get paid for Jan 15th-31st?

2) Is BAH paid in one pay period or is it split up between the two pay periods?

3) When does family separation pay kick in?

4) LESs seem to be different than they were with the Guard, the Guard showed in detail what each thing was the soldier was paid for and then a grand total, subtracted taxes and then the net total..... the one that finally posted today on mypay only shows the net total and doesn't show a break down of anything....

We got paid a little more than I thought we would so I'm trying to figure out exactly what we were paid for...

+This is our first paycheck with Active Army (e-5 sgt @ AIT with over 4 years time in service)
+AD orders started Jan21....
+They should deduct $250 for the pay advance my soldier got for AIT

Anyone willing to take a shot at explaining this to me? Sorry this is so long, I figured pay wouldn't be that much harder to figure out since we've been guard for over 4 years... but... I'm lost lol

[Erin]

The LES you saw yesterday was just a little stub showing that you got paid. The one you get at the end of the month will be much more detailed.

You get paid for the time period immediately before. So the pay for Feb 15 was for Feb 1-15.

A pay period is actually the whole month. So everything goes into that and they try to split it evenly between what you get at the middle of the month and end of the month. Mine is usually off by about $20 but sometimes they different as much as $200...

Family separation pay starts after your husband has been gone for 30 days. So if he went AD on Jan 21st and left that day, he will have been gone 30 days on Feb 20th, so you should get family separation pay for February.

Hope that helps!

[Tissa]

Sometimes the $250 deduction doesn't come off till the 2nd or 3rd paycheck he gets in AIT.

All pays are divided by 2, Base pay, BAH, fam sep, and you get half on the 15th and 1st. Like Erin said the pay isn't always split evenly.

Since this is your first pay they probably added in the pro-rated back pay from last month. So it might cover Jan 21-Feb 15 not sure though but that might account for the extra.