Hey man, just the story I got... QUOTE]
That story is crap! As xmid said, as soon as you graduate USNA, you are out in town paying rent like everyone else if you are sticking around for your stash time, not staying in the hall....ie they don't have room and board paid for. The only logical reason for this policy would be that they don't want to start paying bah (at the Annapolis rate for instance) after grad/comm while the guys are on leave or enroute to P'cola, etc, which can be a couple of month process, or similar situations with stashes for Oharp, etc. With this in mind, it is the same argument that can be made for the ROTC guys, etc. You are in the same sitation as the boat school guys....post comm, stashed or at home waiting for your first duty station (probably living at home in a lot of cases) so it is the SAME waste for them to pay you full BAH just to bank prior to reporting to your first duty station. There are obvious exceptions where you are paying rent, but you were before and they are not leaving you with nothing according to the $figure posted by the OP. Thus you are not getting screwed, and you are not getting screwed because of the Academy guys by following that logic. As stated by the OP, this sucks if you were planning on "banking" it while stashed". I would put out there that BAH is meant to offset the cost of housing, so why would you think that you are "entitled" to extra money to "bank" (money not needed for housing or whatever) at the Navy's expense? It works out that you have a little extra sometimes, but it is not a right that you magically have once commisioned, to get free money to pad your bank account for hookers and blow. Once you get to your first duty station you will be paid at the full rate for that location, so for now be happy that you are getting the extra $527 that you were not getting to help with your rent/bank account before. There was a time when you had to take your lease in and that is what you got up to the max allowed for your location. (Meaning that if your rent was less...you got less...if more than max it came out of your pocket!) I hate bad gouge!