PCS Budget Planner

PCS Entitlements: What You're Actually Owed

A military PCS isn't one payment. It's a stack of separate entitlements — each with its own rules, paperwork, and timing. The five most important pieces:

• DLA — Dislocation Allowance, a one-time payment to set up the new household.
• TLE — Temporary Lodging Expense, reimburses hotel and meals while you're between residences in CONUS.
• Per Diem — Daily allowance for lodging and meals during the actual travel days.
• MALT — Monetary Allowance in Lieu of Transportation, the per-mile rate for driving a POV (Privately Owned Vehicle) to the new station.
• PPM payment — Personally Procured Move (formerly DITY), the payment you receive for moving your own household goods at 100% of the government's constructed cost.

The worksheet above auto-fills DLA from the current DFAS DLA pay table and your HHG weight allowance from JTR Table 5-A. Per diem, MALT, TLE, and PPM are entered manually because the only authoritative figure for those is the one DTS produces against your specific travel order — route, dates, dependents, OCONUS legs, and the en-route lodging rate at every overnight stop. A calculator that pretends to compute those numbers without DTS is not being honest.

DLA: Dislocation Allowance

DLA pays once per PCS to offset the cost of setting up a new household — utility deposits, kitchen restocking, replacement of items that didn't survive the move, the boring expensive stuff. The exact amount changes annually and is published on the official DFAS DLA pay tables. Two practical points:

• Dependents matter. The with-dependents rate is roughly double the without-dependents rate at every paygrade. Make sure your DEERS dependency record is current before submitting your travel claim.
• First-PCS exception. Service members on their first PCS without dependents are not entitled to DLA in most cases. The JTR spells out the specific paragraphs; if you're unsure, ask the Military Expert with your specific situation.

TLE: Temporary Lodging Expense (CONUS)

TLE reimburses you for lodging and a meals/incidentals allowance while you're between residences during a CONUS PCS. The window is up to 14 days total — typically split as 10 days at the new station plus 4 days at the old, but you can use the full 14 in either direction depending on circumstances. The standard daily lodging cap is set at the locality's published lodging rate; meals are reimbursed at a daily rate that varies with dependent count.

The piece most service members miss: TLE is reimbursed with itemized lodging receipts. A flat rate without backup will not be processed. If you're staying with family, document it honestly — there's a non-availability statement category that applies. Submit through DTS at the new station or directly with finance via DD Form 1351-2 if your station prefers.

OCONUS PCS uses TLA (Temporary Lodging Allowance), a different program with longer windows (up to 60 days in some cases) and tighter receipt rules. Don't confuse them on the claim form.

Per Diem & MALT: The Travel Day Math

Per diem covers lodging plus meals/incidentals for each day in travel status. The lodging portion uses the locality's published rate (lookups via DTMO); the M&IE (meals and incidentals) portion is a flat daily figure that's reduced for partial travel days at the standard 75% on the first and last day. Dependents traveling with you receive a percentage of the service member's rate based on their age.

MALT is the per-mile rate for using your POV. The current rate is published by DTMO Mileage Rates and updated periodically. The official ZIP-to-ZIP mileage table sets the distance — your actual odometer reading does not. If you take a detour for sightseeing, MALT still pays only the official direct route.

You're entitled to both MALT and per diem on the same trip — MALT compensates the vehicle expense, per diem compensates the days. Some service members assume it's either/or; it isn't.

PPM (DITY) Math: How Profit Actually Works

PPM (Personally Procured Move) — the program formerly called DITY — pays you 100% of what it would cost the government to ship your household goods at the same weight, distance, and date. That figure is called the constructed cost. From the constructed cost, the government withholds a portion to cover incidentals you didn't substantiate with receipts; the remainder is paid to you, then federal taxes are withheld from the payment as ordinary income.

Your profit is the gap between the gross PPM payment and your actual move costs (truck rental, fuel, packing materials, helpers, en-route lodging, tolls). If you can move for less than the government would have paid a carrier, you keep the difference — minus taxes. This is why PPM is attractive on shorter, lighter moves where the constructed cost is high relative to your actual expenses.

• Empty and full weight tickets are non-negotiable. Two scales (origin and destination), each weighed empty and full. No weight tickets, no payment — that's a rule, not a guideline.
• Substantiate every receipt. Truck rental, fuel, packing materials, hotel nights en route, tolls. Each substantiated receipt reduces the taxable portion of the PPM payment. Receipts you forgot get taxed at your marginal rate.
• The PPM payment is taxable. It increases your AGI in the year of the move, which can push you into a higher bracket or affect deductions. Adjust withholding ahead of time or set aside ~25% of the gross to avoid an underpayment penalty.
• Constructed cost requires the carrier rate. The government uses Defense Transportation System carrier rates to compute constructed cost. Those rates are not publicly published; the transportation office or move.mil generates the figure for your specific move. Any third-party “PPM profit calculator” that gives you a number without those inputs is approximating, not calculating — treat it as a directional check, not a planning figure. Use Ask the Military Expert with your route + weight + dates and we'll walk through the specifics.

Weight Allowances: Don't Pay for Overage

Authorized HHG (Household Goods) weight is set by rank and dependency status in the JTR. The allowance grows with rank and is meaningfully higher with dependents — typically by several thousand pounds. Above the allowance, you pay out of pocket for the overage at the carrier's rate, which is not cheap.

Pro Gear (professional gear required for the performance of your duties) is 2,000 lbs additional, not counted toward your HHG allowance. There's also a 500-lb spouse Pro Gear allowance for spouses with formal employment requirements. Pro Gear must be listed separately on the inventory at packout — if it's in the same boxes as HHG, the carrier rolls it into HHG weight and you can lose the separate allowance.

HHG vs PPM: Which Method Pays You More

The honest answer: it depends on the route, the weight, and your ability to execute a self-move efficiently. A few rules of thumb:

• HHG (full government move) wins when you have a lot of weight, a long distance, OCONUS legs, or a tight timeline. Carriers move bulk for less per pound than you can rent a truck for.
• PPM wins when you have less weight, a shorter distance, time on your hands, and access to a truck/trailer at reasonable cost. Lighter moves have higher constructed cost per pound, and you can usually rent a truck for much less than the carrier would charge.
• Partial PPM — the hybrid — is often the winner for middle cases: HHG for furniture and appliances, PPM for boxes and lower-weight items you can move yourself.

Common Mistakes That Cost Real Money

• Skipping the pre-move walkthrough video. Slow walk through every room with date-stamped video — your only insurance against carrier damage claims later.
• Letting a dependency change happen mid-PCS. A new baby or a marriage between orders and arrival can knock you out of BAH individual rate protection if your new station's 2026 BAH is lower. Sequence the dependency update for after arrival.
• Filing TLE without itemized lodging receipts. Flat summary statements get rejected. Itemized nightly receipts process.
• Forgetting Pro Gear on the inventory. Pro Gear listed separately at packout protects your HHG allowance for furniture and appliances. Pro Gear mixed in with HHG counts against your allowance and can push you over.
• Not adjusting withholding for the PPM payment. The gross PPM payment hits your W-2 as ordinary income. A typical PPM can push your tax bill up by several thousand dollars in a year you weren't expecting it.

How This Worksheet Works

The worksheet auto-fills two figures that are well-defined from your paygrade and dependency status: DLA(Dislocation Allowance) and the HHG weight allowance. Both come from the platform's rate table, which is keyed off the JTR year set in our SSOT (currently 2026); when JTR figures update, the worksheet updates with them.

Everything else — per diem, MALT, TLE, PPM payment, and out-of-pocket expenses — is manual entry. That's deliberate. The honest authoritative source for those numbers is your DTS travel order estimate (or the finance office voucher after settlement). Pulling them in from a generic per-diem table without your specific route, travel days, dependent count, and OCONUS legs would produce a number that's precise but wrong.

The output is a planning estimate, not a settlement figure. Build in a 20–30% buffer; PCS expenses surprise you in directions a spreadsheet doesn't catch.

Related Garrison Ledger Tools

PCS doesn't live in a vacuum. A few tools that show up in the same decisions:

• Spouse Tax Wizard — MSRRA / state residency walkthrough for the moving spouse. Critical in any PCS that crosses state lines, especially mid-tax-year.
• House Hacking Calculator — Buying at the new station with a VA loan and BAH? Model the rental income vs mortgage math before committing.
• TSP Calculator — A PCS often coincides with promotion or rank-up; model the contribution increase against retirement projection.
• Ask the Military Expert — Five free questions a month with citations from the JTR, DFAS, and DTMO. For the “but in my specific situation...” follow-ups this guide can't cover — especially per-diem-by-route, PPM constructed cost, and the “HHG vs PPM for my specific move” question.
• Monthly Military Financial Briefing — One email a month covering rate releases, JTR updates, and PCS-season moves military families actually use.

Sources

Joint Travel Regulations (JTR) · DFAS DLA pay tables · DTMO per diem rates · DTMO MALT mileage rates · move.mil (DPS / DoD official move portal)