Welcome to Balad

Brought to you by the Donut of Misery.

The Donut of Misery is an Excel file someone threw together, probably on a whim, like most amusements here, to pass time. You know...kinda like inmates carve soap or scratch hash marks on their walls.

Jeff pulled the file up to check his progress and that's how I found out about it, since I don't spend my spare time on the shared drive snooping around. You punch in the date you arrived and the date you're supposed to leave, and you get a chart and a few calculations. Here's my pic today:

Mine says I'm one third of the way home. Jeff's a bit over halfway...except he's here for just under six months.

My dollar amounts would be considerably higher if I got Family Separation Allowance, but I don't, on account of I've never officially declared to the government that there's anyone back home I'd rather not be separated from. So it saves them money. (Actually, whether a person would rather be separated or not doesn't enter into it; they just have to be married to qualify.)

Of course, we get $100 per month to compensate us for the Hardship Duty, and Congress managed to eke out another ~$100 per month in Per Diem that we obviously don't need as an excuse to offer us additional compensation of some sort for being separated from home and friends and all things familiar. Then there's that $225 per month for being shot at. (What's your price for being shot at?)

The real bonus, though, isn't shown on the chart. That would be the taxes we aren't paying as a result of being here. If we are in the AOR (which includes Al Udeid in Qatar where it's safe) even one day in a calendar month, the entire month is tax-free. That means I'm only paying taxes for 7 months this year, meaning I save whatever they'd have taken out (you know...that 1/3rd of your paycheck you never see) for the five months I'm a target, as well as saving a percentage of the rest of the months because my taxable income this year is in a considerably lower tax bracket. So I guess, all in all, I'm being compensated as well as I could ask for--and better, possibly--for what they have me doing.

When you stop to think about it, the government has no obligation to pay us extra anything to be here, so I'm grateful for whatever perks they want to shove at me.

I was talking with Kerri, one of my tentmates. She's a cop and she spent about eight months last year at Qatar. She said that last year, by the time she subtracted all her deductables from her taxable income, she ended up getting Earned Income Credit.

The system works, I tell you. ;)

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