Glad you already found Nords -- he is an excellent mentor, and an all around great guy.
Thanks, lhamo!
NORDS! Thank you and your wife for your service also your dedication to educating military members and civilians alike! I'm pretty sure I have read just about everything on your website. Thanks for all the information.
I have opted in the BRS considering my low amount of yrs in service/not knowing if I wanted to stay in. So I thought 16yrs of free money if I decided to stay in sounds like a good deal. Right now I am an E-5 and since deployed contribute roughly 45% of base pay and 65% of Special Duty. Game plan for right now is finish the degree and commission within the next four years. < I just re enlisted; they offered me $90k for 6yrs but I took the $78.6k for 4 yrs (TAX FREE) woohoo!
Will take all the spouse advice and run with it!
I do have a few questions concerning taxes. The first 3 years in the service I used HR Block then I realized most of their people weren't trained and more for the "masses". I now have an accountant that does them considering I know 0% of the tax code. How worried should I be with taxes?
Thanks in advance
-V/R Suave
Excellent-- that's a lot of posts to wade through-- glad they're helping!
If it's not too late for your re-enlistment bonus, you could direct a huge chunk of that tax-free pay into the traditional TSP. While you're deployed, your total TSP contribution limits rise from the usual $18,500 limit to $55,000. However to continue to get the DoD BRS match, you have to contribute less than $18,500 in your Roth TSP until you hit the limit with your December contribution.
I just put up a long example (from the DoD BRS office) on Reddit:
https://old.reddit.com/r/MilitaryFinance/comments/90vbd9/maximizing_brs_tsp_contributions_in_a_combat_zone/It includes a Google Sheet to save to your hard drive and then edit for your numbers:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JW-8EpzRv4Fpt7hV35Su0Av0Q9AgAtGkIVjY-AX6aa0/edit#gid=0If you've already put your re-enlistment bonus elsewhere then you could always live off your $32K cash stash and then boost your traditional TSP contribution to 92%. You have so much tax-free income this year that I'm pretty sure you could even take a big pile of long-term capital gains which would still be taxed at 0%.
I doubt you have any worries about your 2018 tax return (which you'll file in 2019). Your 2018 W-2 will show the correct amount of taxable income for you to enter into your return. If you use someone to prepare your return then ensure they understand that you have plenty of earned income (for your TSP and IRA contributions) but most of that earned income is tax-free.
You could continue to use a tax-prep service or the free Volunteer Income Tax Assistance on your military base, but as lhamo says you could also buy a copy of TurboTax or TaxAct and learn to do your own. You'll answer the software's interview questions, enter the numbers from your W-2 and your investments, and take the standard deduction. If you also qualify for the Earned Income Tax Credit then you'll probably pay zero taxes.
I've done my own taxes for over 40 years. (My father decided that would be my learning experience.) Tax preparers have to know a little of everything ("a mile wide and an inch deep") but you only need to know your personal military pay & investments ("an inch wide and a mile deep"). In the 1980s and 1990s you had to buy a book to work through the various forms, but today's software will keep you on track. In the highly unlikely event that you have a question, you'll post it on their help forums (or on this forum) and you'll be good to go.
And if you & your fiancée are married this year then you can work through the Married Filing Jointly part together, yay!
If your car insurance is through USAA then it's worth e-mailing them about your deployment status and asking them to retroactively credit your account for the dates that you're not using your car. I have no idea whether they'll do that for you, but I've learned to ask.