(And other deployment finance mysteries…)

I was sitting in the International terminal at LAX, waiting to board my flight to Australia to meet Paul for R&R. It was the first time I would see my husband in 9 months, and we had been looking forward to these two weeks as the trip of a lifetime. I should have been ecstatic. Instead, I was hyperventilating.

“Kelly!” I whispered into my cell phone, breathless and panicked.
“What? What’s wrong?”
“I really wanted to have a happy reunion with Paul. Instead, I’m going to kill him!”
Kelly snapped into mom-mode almost immediately. Calm, serious, listening intently:
“Start from the beginning.”

Since I was solely responsible for our family’s finances during the deployment and I was going to be out of town for 2 weeks, I needed to make sure I had paid all the bills on time so there would be no surprises while I was gone. Earlier that day I logged onto our bank’s website and checked the balance of our checking account. (As I do several times a week – I’m pretty particular/fastidious/detail-oriented (any other euphemism for “anal” you care to insert) about the finances.) In the time it took to hit the ‘refresh’ button, $400 popped out of our account.

“What?!”

I blinked at the screen in disbelief. It must be a mistake. I hit refresh again. Another $100 was gone. At first I thought we were in the middle of a Y2K-type computer meltdown, but then the equally-disturbing other option occured to me: Paul.

My husband was a world away in Afghanistan, with a fully-functional American debit card. And all I could do was watch in horror as he used it. I couldn’t call and tell him that I needed that money to pay our bills. I couldn’t demand receipts or explanations about where the money went… and I certainly couldn’t budget for our trip without knowing exactly how much money he was taking out. This was a highly damaging scenario for my saver’s psyche.

“I’m sure there is a very good explanation,” Kelly said calmly when I was finished.
“It better involve rubies,” I whimpered.

Then, in the 20 minutes before I boarded my plane, Kelly reassured me that money was less important that Paul’s safety, and that the happiness of our reunion needed to be my top priority. Thankfully, I listened. As proof, here is a picture of Paul and I moments after we were reunited in a hotel in Sydney. See, both smiling.

But there is a lesson here that I learned the hard way. During a deployment, you will not be able to have all the little, daily conversations that you rely on to keep your union and your household running. You will not be able to say casually over meatloaf, “Hey, honey, what did you need $400 for today, anyway?” So you’d better have those conversations before the other player in your finanical destiny heads overseas.

Paul and I mistakenly thought that having him gone meant he wouldn’t be spending any money. So, I didn’t budget any for him to spend. And even though, in the grand scheme of things, he did spend far less than he would have at home, he did occasionally need cash. Mostly for phone cards – which I was more than happy to pay for. If we had it to do over again, (read: next time) I think I would be more comfortable with budgeting a certain amount of money that was his to spend every month. Then I wouldn’t count on it to pay the bills, and if I noticed that money was being taken out of the account, I would know exactly when it would stop, instead of watching helplessly.

Oh, and one more thing. We spent our second wedding anniversary in Australia. And I got beautiful Afghan ruby earrings.

Read Deployment Finances I: What You Need to Know Before They Go
Read Deployment Finances II: Setting Financial Goals During a Deployment
Read Deployment Finances III: Retirement Planning