Cost of living allowance rates up this year

  • Published
  • By Chris McCann
  • JBER PAO
JOINT BASE ELMENDORF-RICHARDSON, Alaska --  To offset the sometimes-high costs of living outside the contiguous United States, the Department of Defense pays service members living in those areas extra money each month as a cost of living allowance.

Every year the rates are re-examined to make sure service members living in Alaska or Germany, for example, will have approximately the same cost-to-income ratio those in North Carolina or Oklahoma.

The COLA rates for service members were just raised on Feb. 1, so military personnel can expect to see a little bit more in their paycheck this month.

For most of Alaska, rates went up two percent. In Kodiak and Nome, the rate jumped by four percent, while Unalaska, Homer, and Ketchikan rates didn't change at all, according to Lance Herrington, a management analyst at the Air Force Smart Operations for the 21st Century office on Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson.

"Last fall, the Per Diem Transportation Allowance Committee did a living-pattern survey, and asked all service members to respond," Herrington explained.

"They asked where the service members shopped - for meat, vegetables, clothing - for anything not housing-related. Then a month or two later, the committee sent people to the top two or three stores for each major category, to survey the costs of goods and services."

Results from the latest survey led to a bump for the JBER area, Herrington said.
"It's designed to equalize the cost of living around the world," Herrington said. "Those rates usually kick in around February or March."

A service member's COLA pay is determined by pay grade and time in service, as well as number of dependents and whether the service member is living in barracks, said Herrington.

Civilian DoD employees also receive COLA, but the rates are different and the recent change in military rates is irrelevant to those employees, Herrington stressed. Civilian employees can check their locality pay allowance at www.opm.gov.

Service members can calculate their COLA amount for a pay period at www.defensetravel.dod.mil/site/cola.cfm.

In the last 20 years, Herrington said, Alaska COLA rates have only gone down once, but he stressed that they could drop in any given year.

Those service members who are making a permanent change-of-station should remember that their pay will appear to drop when they leave Alaska, when the COLA stops.

"The rate depends on the economy," Herrington said.