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As part of NextGen MilSpouse’s Make 2016 Your Bitch Challenge week nine was having a week of no screen evenings. Full disclosure: I wrote the article and took it on as a personal challenge since I may have a problem with FOMO and screen addiction. So James and I started our no screen week and here’s what we did…
So I have to say that one of my favorite benefits of this military life is the medical insurance aka Tricare. Care aside, because that varies by provider, it’s an absolutely amazing deal as an active duty family. Most companies charge far more for family members to be covered by insurance than we do as an Army family (we only pay for dental and that’s a very low price), so it’s a great benefit! But it can be tricky to manage aka what makes it not so great as the dependent. I have had some ups and downs with Tricare and I wanted to share what I’ve learned in these few years in hopes that it can help you!
Continue reading “Tips and Tricks for Managing Your Tricare Benefits”
There have been some crazy articles in the Military Spouse world lately asking for benefits that I have NEVER EVER heard of. And they are sounding like crazy people so let’s break them down (and apologies in advance but I rant a bit):
An officer’s wife wrote into a Navy publication upset that she/her car were no longer being saluted at her duty station when she drove on post. Personally I’ve never experienced this when I’m in the car by myself. When my husband is driving us onto post he is saluted, but salute a wife? I didn’t even think this was a thing. Apparently it is…kinda.
Continue reading “Military Monday: Are spouses entitled to salutes, extra pay?”
I know Thursdays is usually reserved for food and drink posts but I’m making a slight exception. I mean this is about ketchup…but it’s mainly military.
Some of you may have heard about Ketchup-Gate, it’s on about every military spouse related website out there. It was named by NextGen Mil Spouses after this article from the Washington Post about how commissaries are a huge part of defense spending and basically how some are trying to eliminate them. It focuses on the apparently 12 varieties of Ketchup at the grocery store. But there have been others, like this one from HuffPo which cost some uproar in March.
There have been lots of responses to these, but the most recent and a great argument is from Amy Bushatz on SpouseBuzz with her open letter to those that are so vocal about the “lavish” benefits military families are entitled to, from pay to on-post grocery stores. After reading the whole article from Washington Post – I can say that I think looking for a better financial model for the commissaries is a good idea but fully eliminating them would not go over so well. Let me share a story:
Making friends is never easy. I think we’ve all had a new kid at school, or been the new kid in new school, and I think moving to a new place is a bit like that!
I went to school with a lot of the same people from kindergarten through high school. While there were new additions of friends, and others moved away or we grew apart, it was fairly insular for me. College was eye-awakening. Moving across the country I hardly knew anyone in NYC. I was lucky to have some of the most amazing people live on the same floor of my dorm as me, in fact some of those people are still my best friends. As I went through college I made some friends in classes and clubs. There were friends from internships and jobs. These were people that I knew and introduced my husband to, we had his friends from school too, and some were in Arizona with us, but Washington was a bit different.
