I haven't been saving for retirement like I should have. I'm currently 36 years old and I need to get on the ball.

Well I've looked over my mail and realized that I did have a 401K with my old civilian job that I thought I had rolled it over to an IRA account. But looking at the paperwork I realized that it stated "401K" at the top of it. So I contacted my old job (which happens to have been with a bank) and called Human Resources.

I didn't want to be penalized for having kept it as a 401K plan because I literally went from one job and the next day to the other job (I worked it out that my leave would end the day before I started the military so that there wasn't a lapse in employment).

So after speaking with them I learned that I have three choices:

1. Cash it out
2. Roll it over to an IRA
3. Keep it as an inactive 401K as long as it's at least $1,000

So I chose the third option. This means that I can't contribute to it BUT I can have the dividends re-invested. So it'll eventually grow on it's own. I do need to go through it and re-do the allocations. I just looked at it and realized that leaving it alone for 19 months have left it at a very imbalanced allocation. I currently have 94% in just stock alone. I don't like that so I'll stop contributing so much to stock and re-allocate to the other funds.

But as I was talking to the banker while I was at the bank, she asked me how long I was with the company. I told her that it was almost 10 years and she stated that I would have had a pension started for me on my behalf during the first few years.

So I called human resources again and learned that yes, I do have an inactive pension. I don't need to change it or anything, I can keep it there and it'll grow inactively.

So I opted again to just leave it there. I don't want all my money in one place anyways.

But I'm glad that I've at least started on it and therefore it'll be a good stepping stone. But again I'm glad to add this to my portfolio. I just need to clean it up a bit!

Well another day another dollar. But in my case it's an extra $175.03 per month gross.

I've been looking at the military pay raise charts. I knew about the 1.7% pay raise to the basic pay but found out less than a week ago about the raises that would affect Basic Allowance for Subsistence (BAS) and Basic Allowance for Housing (BAH).

This is great! This means that I can possibly either put more towards debt, savings or whatnot! I'm not sure how much this equals to after taxes but this is way better than any employer that I've worked for.

I have received two raises in the past year and I haven't even been promoted yet! (currently an E-3). Now I have to really look at things and figure out how to work it into my budget.

In the past my very small raises went into my pocket and seemed to have never existed. Now I want to respond appropriately. This will take some time for me to decide. What I really want to do is start contributing to my retirement. I already know that I want to put it in a Roth IRA although I'm not sure if I want it to be a TSP Roth IRA or one held with a bank.

There are also other things that I want to do such as participate in the 70.3 Half IronMan in 2014 (I need to purchase a bicycle for this because I no longer have one), go to the 2016 Olympics, do the Kona IronMan in 2015 or 2016 and purchase or build a home.

I could start my savings plans now for all of that as well as the things that are on my 2013 goals list (I'm thinking of adding these to my 2013 lists so that they can start getting funded). Or start contributing to my retirement earlier instead of waiting til I get home or both...

I will more than likely wait til I get back home to actually contribute to my IRA.