Certain positions, such as living in Townsville or Darwin, or training recruits will provide you extra money for that location or role. Many have used that money for finance on a depreciative asset that was rarely used except for driving to and from work from how busy they are in the ADF.

Then when posted out to a position without an allowance, they felt that financial pinch hard and sold the item they didn’t get value from.

Consider as alternatives to more debt using allowances to:

• Placing allowance money into your ADF Super as a Non Concessional Contribution by automating a payment the day you get paid. ‘After’ factoring in tax
• If your child is due to finish school the same year you expect to post out, use it to put your child into a private school
• Put it into a holiday or future large outright purchase savings account

Calculating post tax allowance amount can be done using your pay statement and deducting your tax rate:

• Pay statement says: District Allowance $375
• $375 x .7 (30% tax) = $262.5 additional (bank transfer) fortnightly payment to your ADF Super or savings
• X .63 if in 37% bracket

This means when posted from Darwin to Perth for example, when the district allowance ends and no other allowance takes its place, you feel no impact to lifestyle or spending power.

Post exercise Field Pay allowance Non Concessional Contribution example:

• Pay statement says: Tier 1 Field Pay x 12 $1405.92
• $1405.92 x .7 = $984.14 Amount you could bank transfer to your ADF Super or savings without impacting your usual finances.

Remember, a 16.4% match on the field allowances will also go into your super