19 July 2010

Home sweet home...

So I've been thinking lately... we live on post, but most of my MilSpouse friends don't. Like I'd guess 90% don't. And that makes me curious.

We love living on post. Yes, Swiss's high rank allows for a larger house (though his BAH is also higher and could be used -perhaps- better off post), but we really like being close to everything here. Because we are so close to everything, it isn't an ordeal to run to the PX/Commissary/whatever and usually Swiss gets to come home for lunch. And the 'rush hours' (all 8 of them) on and off post here are RIDICULOUS so we figure it would be best to not have to mess with it. Plus we knew we wouldn't be here a whole year, so dealing with the housing office in regards to leases made a ton more sense than a landlord to us. Now, to be fair, I truly think that if we were staying in much longer or got Stop-Lossed we would still live on post. Swiss likes it and, oddly enough, so do I.

But. I know we aren't in the majority. Loads of folks live off post for a litany of reasons. Heck, most of the folks we know down here at Fort X live off post and, like I said before, most of my MilSpouse friends live off post too. So what gives?

I guess I am wondering why you choose to live off post... what is it that drives your decisions when you PCS somewhere new? Is it based on the deployment schedule, availability, location, intense desire to get away from the bugles and Humvees or do you love waking up to the sounds of Reveille and Apaches flying overhead? Does it very depending on the post you are at? Do you rent or buy if you live off post? I am super intrigued to hear your responses and reasoning!

So you tell me! You can choose multiple items in the poll... first choose where you live (one of the first 3 options) and then tell me why... either in the poll or the comments.

Home sweet home is... and why?
On Post
Off Post (own a home)
Off Post (rental)
Housing can be had for less than your BAH
Need a break from all things Military
Love the convenience of living near everything on Post
Other, I'll tell you in the comments

  
pollcode.com free polls

Thanks for humoring me dear Readers! Hope your weeks are all off to a great start!

3 comments:

tootie said...

We live off post at our current duty station because housing is really affordable. I usually like to live off post so we don't feel like we're in the military 24/7 (even though we are :)

At the next place we're assigned, we'd definitely consider military housing depending on the housing market in the local area.

So I guess the short answer is, it depends :)

Bette said...

We live in leased housing, so not really on post, but all of our neighbors are military. If I start talking about it I'll hijack your comments, so until I draft a blog post, I'll just say: It's been interesting.

Kayla said...

We live off post for the simple reason we aren't married haha. But even if we were, we've discussed it and decided that our BAH is better served by renting at a lower price and using the rest for bills and such. :)