Should you and your family's life style be any different based on rank?

Of course it will be different is your lifestyle the same as when you were a private? Peoples lifestyle changes with there incomes no matter how slight or indifferent they do change.

I think the family should be able to live within their paycheck...

I hit upon this in my one post over in the thread about the mil/mil BAH Senate proposal. I posited that the DoD should create a single standard of living for all mil members (vs our current tiered system) and if you want to live above that standard, use your base pay to do that.