Welcome, Tamgerine. Hopefully your Afghanistan time gets cut short and you can come home sooner.
So I’ve just started reading MMM within the past few months. I’m interested in adopting a lot of the principles when I return home (I’m currently deployed to Afghanistan) but as for the money right now I just don’t know what it’s doing or how to allocate it. I’d like to think I’m decent at saving money, but I just started putting it places with no real regards to a goal or what I wanted as a result.
A high savings rate is more important than being a brilliant investor, so you're on the right track. As for your asset allocation, you should spend a few hours figuring out what you'd like to do and then automate it so that you don't have to revisit it more than once or twice a year. Your TSP allocation looks fine now, and you can always tweak it once you decide what to do.
The first thing you should do (this week!-- if you're not already) is get started on the Savings Deposit Program:
http://www.dfas.mil/militarymembers/payentitlements/sdp.htmlYou're stuck there in a combat zone, so you might as well get paid an extra 10% interest for it.
The Bogleheads Wiki is a great start on asset allocation:
http://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Main_Pageand they have a dedicated section on military finances:
http://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Military_finances Some of this section may be a little "Well, duh" depending on your experience.
There are thousands of asset allocations that will get you to financial independence. Many of them are good enough, and none of them are perfect. You want to find one that lets you sleep at night, that you feel comfortable investing in during a recession, and that's easy to maintain.
In general, as long as you're in the military (and once you've paid off debt) you can afford to be a little aggressive in your savings and your asset allocation. The key is to set your asset allocation in the TSP, and then make sure your MyPay allotment is maxing it out. Ideally you'd contribute first to the Roth TSP, then as much as you can in the conventional TSP, and then max out your Roth IRAs. Remember that while the govt is paying you to live in Afghanistan you can contribute as much as $52K of tax-free pay to the TSP in 2014, so this is a (hopefully) once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
... he is self-sustaining...
Those are good to have. Easy to maintain. They're certainly difficult to replace...
No credit card debt, no student loans. The only thing I owe is 7,300 on my car that I had bought new after my last deployment. It’s a 2013 Ford Fiesta with a 4.69% interest rate originally financed for 14,000. I could pay it off completely, or would that money be better invested somewhere else? I do not know!
As others have said, pay it off now. You have the cash and that 4.69% is just sucking money out of your accounts. Then just drive the car into the ground for the next decade or so while you're setting aside $50-$100 per month for your car maintenance/replacement fund.
I’d like to buy a house and eventually use it as a rental property if possible, but we move a lot because of me being in the military so I’m not sure that buying a house is the best financial decision. Do I even have enough of a down-payment to make it a wise option?
Appreciate any advice from the more experienced, thanks!
In general, the risks (and hassles) of military home ownership outweigh the rewards. If you're hard-wired to be a landlord then you'll figure out how to take the plunge and succeed at it, but if you think it's a chore (let alone from a different time zone) then keep renting until you figure out where you want to spend the rest of your life. The fixed costs of buying & selling will usually wipe out your profit margins when you transfer frequently, and the property management fees (and other expenses) of landlording will generally make it difficult to achieve positive cash flow. But as I've said, if you're hard-wired to be a landlord then feel free to ignore this advice and jump in.
When you start researching asset allocation and savings rates, take a look at this post:
http://the-military-guide.com/2013/06/24/how-many-years-does-it-take-to-reach-financial-independence/