Let me tell you something about the American Dream for military families: It comes bubble‑wrapped, labeled “fragile,” and shipped via a private contractor who will probably lose one of your boxes marked “sentimental items.”
Related: Yes, we’re still waiting on orders. No, we don’t have an update
The orders drop. You’ve got 60 days, two kids, one dog, and no idea what the rental market looks like in Fort Nowhere. A PCS isn’t just a move, it’s a budget killer in camouflage.
I’ve lived in 12 different domiciles over the last 20 years across five PCS duty stations. That’s 12 kitchens, 12 laundry rooms, and 12 rounds of trying to remember which box the coffee maker went in. In the last 10 years alone, I’ve survived the mold‑induced furniture purge of base housing, a sewage backup that took out half our possessions, a COVID‑era DITY move that nearly broke us, and a one‑year unaccompanied tour to Korea that came right after my husband’s deployment—because apparently, “family readiness” is a choose‑your‑own‑adventure novel no one asked for.
Here’s the truth: Every PCS is a financial ambush in disguise, and most of us walk right into it carrying a ton of stress, maybe a couple of kids, and definitely some false hope.
At one point, I realized I had owned nine different washer and dryer sets. Nine. Every time I moved, the cheaply made appliances never survived the transplant. My couches have been replaced at least five times. Yet somehow, our home still looks like the inside of an Airman’s Attic, complete with thrifted furniture, curbside salvages, and coupon‑clipped chaos. Despite 20 years of service, we’ve never truly recovered from the financial mayhem that accompanied each move.
When we were younger—living on an E‑4 paycheck, raising a toddler, and with another baby on the way—we were hit by an uninsured driver mid‑PCS. I was seven months pregnant, our van was totaled, and we had no backup plan. Later, older and allegedly wiser, we attempted a DITY move because someone said we could “make money” that way. Spoiler alert: we did not. Four kids, two dogs, and a storage Tetris nightmare later, we were in the hole—again. And by the time COVID rolled around, the forced DITY move of 2020 was just another nail in the coffin.
The truth is, the PCS system was broken long before any of us learned how to pack our own flatware. It doesn’t account for emergencies, delays, lost shipments, or real‑life human circumstances. It assumes every family has the same bandwidth, the same budget, and the same ability to financially recover after yet another relocation.
And the kicker? Many military families don’t just “recover”—they live in a constant state of debt triage, paying off one PCS just in time to start another.
This article kicks off a new We Are the Mighty series about Navigating Financial Crisis, and it’s for every military family who’s ever looked at their PCS orders and thought, “How are we going to afford this?”
These articles unpack the hidden financial toll behind military moves, break down your entitlements, and offer hard-earned strategies (and legit resources) for staying above water when the next set of orders drops. Each is part sarcasm, part survival guide, and part intervention. Because the truth is, every PCS is an extreme budget shock, and pretending otherwise only sets the next generation of military families up for disappointment and debt. What follows is a breakdown of how we got here, why it’s not getting better anytime soon, and what service members and families can actually do to prepare for the chaos no one discloses in the briefing slides.
