A Family's Guide to the Military for Dummies - Softcover

Garrett, Sheryl

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0470386975 ISBN 13: 9780470386972

Publisher: For Dummies, 2008

Synopsis

Expert advice on all aspects of military life

A Family's Guide to the Military For Dummies is for the millions of military dependents, family members, and friends who are looking for straightforward guidance to take advantage of the benefits and overcome the challenges unique to life in the military. This comprehensive guide covers such key topics as introducing military life to readers new to the armed forces, financial planning, relocation, deployment, raising kids alone while a partner is away, and taking advantage of the available benefits. It offers tips and advice for dealing with emotions that surround events like deployments, deciphering the acronyms used in daily military life, forming support groups, keeping track of a loved one's whereabouts, and surviving on a military base in a foreign country.

About this title

About the Author

Sheryl Garrett is a financial advisor, author, and speaker. She founded the Garrett Planning Network and is the author of Personal Finance Workbook For Dummies.

Sue Hoppin is the Deputy Director for Spouse Outreach at the Military Officers Association of America. In 2007, Military Spouse magazine placed Sue on their 2007 Who's Who of Military Spouses list.

From the Back Cover

Your personal how-tohandbook for living yourbest life as a military family

Looking for a clear, concise guide to military life? Whether you're new to the armed forces or planning your latest relocation, this plain-English handbook has expert tips for overcoming the challenges and taking advantage of the benefits unique to life in the military. From living on a base to financial planning to deployment, you'll see how to find all the support your family needs.

• Grasp the boot camp basics understand rank and military hierarchy, find your way around a base, and connect with others in the community

• Take charge of your finances decipher military compensation, handle your taxes, build credit, and invest for your family's future

• Understand your military benefits obtain health and dental insurance, utilize the family support centers, explore retirement benefits, and more

• Raise a happy family from housing and childcare to education and recreation, take advantage of all the military offers

• Handle deployments prepare for deployment, help children cope, stay connected with your loved one, and manage stress and anxiety

• Transition out of the military assess the financial benefits, retire from service, and plan for your next career

Open the book and find:

• An overview of military versus civilian lifestyle

• Your place in the military structure

• Educational and employment opportunities

• Family support centers, groups, and associations

• The best benefits for military spouses

• How to avoid scams against service members

• A family's guide to military acronyms

• Programs outside the military you can turn to for support

From the Inside Flap

Your personal how-tohandbook for living yourbest life as a military family

Looking for a clear, concise guide to military life? Whether you're new to the armed forces or planning your latest relocation, this plain-English handbook has expert tips for overcoming the challenges and taking advantage of the benefits unique to life in the military. From living on a base to financial planning to deployment, you'll see how to find all the support your family needs.

• Grasp the boot camp basics — understand rank and military hierarchy, find your way around a base, and connect with others in the community

• Take charge of your finances — decipher military compensation, handle your taxes, build credit, and invest for your family's future

• Understand your military benefits — obtain health and dental insurance, utilize the family support centers, explore retirement benefits, and more

• Raise a happy family — from housing and childcare to education and recreation, take advantage of all the military offers

• Handle deployments — prepare for deployment, help children cope, stay connected with your loved one, and manage stress and anxiety

• Transition out of the military — assess the financial benefits, retire from service, and plan for your next career

Open the book and find:

• An overview of military versus civilian lifestyle

• Your place in the military structure

• Educational and employment opportunities

• Family support centers, groups, and associations

• The best benefits for military spouses

• How to avoid scams against service members

• A family's guide to military acronyms

• Programs outside the military you can turn to for support

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

A Family's Guide to the Military For Dummies

By Sheryl Garrett Sue Hoppin

John Wiley & Sons

Copyright © 2009 Sheryl Garrett
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-470-38697-2

Chapter One

Living Life As a Military Family

In This Chapter

* Becoming acquainted with military culture

* Maintaining flexibility

* Talking the talk

* Getting to know everyone

* Figuring out if living on the installation is for you

Some people believe that being in the military is no different than working for a major corporation with multiple outlets around the world. But what corporation do you know requires all their employees to be available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 365 days a year?

Military service is a demanding way of life and there are very few people willing to sign on the dotted line and add themselves to the 1 percent of our nation's population that makes up this nation's All Volunteer Force.

If your servicemember is part of this All Volunteer Force, welcome to the club. Life in the military is wrought with its own challenges and rewards. But success is 90 percent attitude. Throughout this chapter, we draw a broad picture of what sets military families apart from their civilian counterparts, talk about some of the idiosyncrasies of the military, as well as let you know what you can expect right off the bat.

Getting a Grasp on the Military Culture

The military certainly retains its own culture. When your servicemember joins the military, you're exposed to a tight-knit community of people supporting a cause greater than themselves and dealing with issues that the average soccer mom would never encounter. In the sections that follow, we help you understand the military culture by giving you an idea of why servicemembers join and stay in the military as well as how connected you become to your community.

Believing in something bigger than yourself

Ask 100 people why they chose to join the military and you'll probably get about 100 different answers that might include travel, thrills, opportunities, money, and benefits. For those of us with wanderlust, the promise of travel still serves to lure some to military service. Certainly with the temporary duties (TDYs/TADs) and opportunities to be stationed overseas at exotic locations, wanting to see the world is as good a reason to join the military as any other. There are also some thrill seekers who are drawn to the military by the promise of adventure and tough challenges that only jumping out of airplanes or landing on an aircraft carrier can deliver.

Many choose service as a way of upholding family tradition. For some, it's all they know. If they're military brats, they may loath to imagine any other life. Others are looking for job security or opportunities to learn new skills and better themselves. The benefits of the Montgomery GI Bill (MGIB) still draw people looking for a way to finance a college education. Although there are definite financial benefits to military service, not too many people are going to say that they did it solely for the money. So what keeps people in through the deployments, family separations, and constant moves? Simply said, that belief in something bigger than themselves. Ask 100 people why they chose to stay in the military and you'll probably only get a handful of answers that include honor, pride, and a desire to serve their country. The decision your servicemember made to join the military means that you are now part of this great tradition.

Making lifelong connections

The military seems to draw together a diverse group of people from all walks of life. However, that common bond of believing in something bigger than yourself ensures that you already have a strong tie to the friends you make in the military.

You'd think that the constant moving would guarantee that you are forever saying goodbye to friends and starting over again. To a certain extent, that's true; but in the military, you never say goodbye, just "hope to see you again soon." With a finite number of installations you can be stationed to, chances are good that over the years, you'll keep running into some of the same people over and over again.

TIP

Don't burn bridges because you never know when you'll run into that annoying soccer mom again somewhere down the road.

Civilian friendships are forged over shared experiences such as attending the same schools, vacationing in the same places, and living in the same small town for your entire life. The military's not so different. Think of a culture where you all move in the same circles. Even though you'll move from base to base, you stand the likelihood of living in the same towns (although at different times), vacationing in the same military hot spots, and going to the same base schools. Your best friends become those who served with you on the PTA board, the mother of your son's best friend, or your neighbor on base who watches your kids so you can get a haircut or make a commissary run without your screaming toddler in tow.

So what's different about the military? Well, some of your best friends will also be the ones who help you weather that second, fourth, and fifth deployment. The ones you call at 3 a.m. because the news just reported some casualties in the field. They're the ones who babysit your kids who are running a 101 degree temperature when you can least afford to miss another day of work. They are the same people who cry with you because your spouse is passed over for a promotion or rejoice with you because he or she is chosen for one. They understand without words what you are going through because they have walked in your shoes. Your military friends become an extended family and these are relationships that you will come to count on throughout your time in the military.

Like everything else worth having, these lifelong connections need to be nurtured. There are certain things you can do to develop and maintain these strong connections:

  Meet the other families in your unit or squadron.

  Get involved.

  Be there for your friends and recognize when they might need some extra care and attention.

  Stay in touch.

  Share your milestones (such as promotions, graduations, and new additions to the family).

  Make the effort to send change of address cards.

  Send those annual holiday cards and letters.

  Follow the golden rule: Always write in pencil.

Being Flexible - the Key to a Happy Military Life

If you're the type of person who likes to control your surroundings, you're going to have to let that go. After your servicemember joins the military, you're no longer in charge of your life. Of course, you still have some input, but ultimately, your life is out of your hands.

With all the things you can't control, you may find it easy to start thinking that you have become an unwitting pawn in someone else's life. Don't get sucked into that mentality. True, military life demands that you look at things from a different perspective than civilian life. Moving every 2 to 4 years gives you an opportunity to recreate yourself every time. Think of the opportunities you can have that others can only dream of. While your civilian friends can only look at pictures of the great works of art, you can visit them in Paris, London, or Florence. Your friends at home learn a second language in an academic setting while you have the opportunity to immerse yourself in other cultures and languages. You get the idea - it's all in the perspective. Rather than lamenting about how the military limits your choices, start thinking about how it broadens your horizons.

In the sections that follow, we give you some advice on how to control the things you can control and let go of the other stuff ... for now. Maintaining a good outlook ensures that you will be open to opportunities that present themselves.

Adjusting to different directions

So you may be thinking that your servicemember is given orders, you follow them, and that's that. Well, that's just the beginning. A lot can happen between being given an order and preparing for it. Be prepared to adjust to situations, such as the following examples:

  Just when you think you're headed to Hawaii on assignment and begin dreaming of Mai tais on the beach, a change in orders occurs and you're headed to Iceland - start dreaming about geysers and five-foot snow drifts!

  Your servicemember deployed in the last year and is not due to deploy again for another year, but the needs of the service prevail and you learn that he or she's scheduled to be on the next plane out for another rotation.

REMEMBER

In the military, nothing is carved in stone.

Adapting to a changing homelife

You need to be flexible with your home as well. With bases spread out across the United States and overseas, imagine all the different floor plans you can look forward to. One assignment you might be living in a 1,500-square-foot ranch-style home and the next assignment, your same family could be expected to fit into a 900-square-foot apartment-style home. That gorgeous, comfortable overstuffed couch that seemed like such a great idea in Oklahoma might be a little less so when it won't fit into your little apartment in Japan. And the ceiling to floor drapes that were to die for in your German house with the tall ceilings, huge windows, and great light may not be as attractive in Florida when you're having to drill into cinderblock to hang them and then once you get them hung up, they block out all the natural light coming in through those teeny tiny hurricane-friendly windows.

Regardless of how well you might plan, none of your furniture will fit into the parade of houses you'll ultimately live in throughout a military career. At least, not necessarily into the rooms they were intended for. More than a few military families have had to live with a sideboard in the bedroom because that's the only place it would fit. And there's nothing stranger than seeing a huge, ornate crystal chandelier from Prague hanging in the foyer of a prefab base home in Grand Forks, North Dakota. As a fellow military spouse, you quickly learn to ignore these anomalies and sympathize with the need to adapt and make do.

Keeping education and employment flexible

The need to remain flexible is nowhere more evident than in spouse employment and education. There has been many a spouse who started a bachelor's degree at one institution only to finally graduate seven years and four different universities later. And what military spouse doesn't have numerous gaps in his or her rsum with a strange and seemingly unrelated range of jobs held over the years? The desire to create a life for yourself and the need to balance it with your servicemember's military service is a challenge that has faced military spouses throughout the years. More information on military spouse employment and education can be found in Chapter 11.

Unlike a lot of your civilian friends, you don't have the luxury of sticking around to finish your degree or work to climb the corporate ladder and build seniority. But think of it this way: How many other people get the opportunity to meet people from all different walks of life, travel around the United States, and possibly live in a foreign country?

Traveling the world ... If you want to

Join the military, see the world. This is still true. Depending on how adventurous you are, you can see as much or as little of the world as you want to. Some people will spend their entire career in the continental United States. Others will grab any chance they can to travel. In this section, we tell you how, between overseas assignments and space available (Space-A) seating on military flights, opportunities to see the world abound.

Overseas assignments

If you've ever been curious about other countries and are offered an overseas assignment, seize the opportunity. You'll never get a better chance to immerse yourself in another culture. The greatest thing about being stationed overseas with the military is that you have all the benefits of living in a foreign country with a security blanket. Regardless of what foreign locale you may be stationed to, as soon as you make it back on base, the rules change, and you're back in Little America. Back to the familiar fast-food outlets, commissary, and exchange (more about these in Chapter 4). What could be better than the adventure of living overseas with all the comforts of home?

Space-available travel

If you want to see the world and aren't fortunate enough to be stationed overseas, take advantage of your Space-A (space-available) benefits. Forget reading just about riding in a gondola in the canals of Venice or gazing at the geishas in old Kyoto. With some time and research, you can soon be on your way to traveling there for next to nothing.

Space-available travel is one of the greatest privileges extended to servicemembers and their dependents. The premise is simple, if there are extra seats available on the military aircraft flying around official cargo and personnel, and if the crew is not restricted by mission constraints, extra available seats are released to space-available travelers.

There are six categories of Space-A travelers, and seats are allocated by descending order with Category 1 (CAT-1) being the highest and Category 6 (CAT-6) being the lowest. Within the categories, passengers compete based on how long they have been registered in the Space-A system for seats on the flight.

WARNING!

Space-A flights are unreliable and should only be attempted by people who have a lot of time and flexibility. At any given moment, a flight might be terminated without notice and you may have to purchase a commercial ticket back. In other words, if your sister's getting married Wednesday on the west coast and you have to be back on the east coast by Saturday, Space-A is not your best option. However, given enough time, Space-A travel is a great and affordable way to see the world.

To address the questions of who's eligible and how Space-A travel works, check out the most up-to-date information on the Air Mobility Command fact sheet: http://www.amc.af.mil/questions/topic.asp?id=380.

In addition to the official information, there are entire books and Web sites dedicated to the ins and outs of Space-A travel, but here are some basic things to remember:

  Space-A travelers can register up to 60 days before their desired date of travel.

  Military personnel need to be on leave orders to register for Space-A.

  Although there is no cost in travelling on a military aircraft, there are some costs associated with traveling on a commercially-contracted airplane.

  If your flight has multiple legs, you can get bumped off at any time.

  Show times for military flights have a way of changing based on the needs of the mission, and there is no obligation to notify Space-A travelers of these changes, so stay close to the terminal or at least check in frequently for updates.

  While large Air Force terminals are your best bets, virtually any U.S. Navy, Army, or Marine airfield will also have Space-A flights.

  Travel light because different aircraft have different baggage restrictions. With a small plane like the C-21, you may be limited to 30 pounds of luggage.

  Travel with ample cash or credit cards because you never know how long you'll be out and food and lodging at some locations can really add up. Besides, you never know when you'll have to shell out cash for a return ticket home.

Speaking in Code: Learning the Military Language

So what does it mean when you're telling your family and friends about your impending move and they're looking at you like you've grown three heads? Stop wondering - you've become the latest victim of speaking in military colloquialisms and acronyms. Don't worry: Everyone is guilty of it.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from A Family's Guide to the Military For Dummiesby Sheryl Garrett Sue Hoppin Copyright © 2009 by Sheryl Garrett. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Edition details

• Publisher: For Dummies
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0470386975
• ISBN 13: 9780470386972
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 386