Once upon a time, the Basic Allowance for Housing each service member receives was designed to cover all of each family's housing costs, including renter's insurance.
Those days are gone.
As of this year, BAH is only meant to cover 97 percent of your housing costs, and not touch renter's insurance at all. Eventually that number will shrink to 95 percent. Lawmakers say this is a necessary change to cut costs.
See your BAH with the Military.com Pay App.
But what isn't made clear is that BAH is also only supposed to cover a certain type and size of dwelling per rank -- and that size does not take into consideration how big your family might be or the modern military family. It doesn't consider, for example, that someone between E-1 and E-4 might need more space than the two bedrooms it is designed to cover.
Here is a breakdown on what size home each rate is designed to cover.
So we wanted to know whether or not you find that the BAH you're assigned really does cover even 97 percent of the house you want or need.
And the majority of you said it does not -- while about 26 percent said they barely squeak by. Here are the full results:
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