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Married to the Military: Five Freebies for New Spouses to be Aware Of
Photo: AstroGuyz.Com
Newly married? To an active duty military member? Feeling like you landed on another planet where they speak an entirely different language of alphabet soup? Military culture shock is nothing to laugh at. Neither are the budget adjustments you'll need to make as you hop from base to base, setting up new home after new home. This article, written in collaboration with Kate Kashman of Military.Com, features five frugal resources new dependent spouses might not know about. Read on.
Welcome to the first of what I hope will be an entire series of articles featuring budget and lifestyle tips for those individuals married to folks serving as active duty military members in our armed forces. It can be an entirely different world than one might expect. Kate Kashman, author of the Military.Com blog Paycheck Chronicles, agrees. We recently had a rather rowdy post-lunch discussion about the strains and strategies we've each experienced trying to maintain marriage, family, career and budget while married to an active duty spouse. For the purposes of this article however, we're focusing on five frugal freebies for those newly married persons to be aware of as they gear up for living on (or near) their first base.
The Self Help Store.
My Take: Not every single base has one of these, but many of them do. What they offer? Various DIY supplies such as duct tape, mulch, landscaping tiles, light bulbs, etc. The catch? You need to be living in base housing to take advantage of the free materials. This is basically a benefit that exists to sort of compensate those folks that have to move around frequently, constantly getting rid of those very items to keep their limited weight allotment within the required parameters.
Not exactly a free ride at Home Depot, but the basics are usually there so you don't have to buy your blue painting tape in bulk again only to give away most of the roll when you move before your next painting project gets done. We never lived on base, so I never got to take advantage of this. But if you are one of those couples that prefers base housing to purchasing or renting an off base house (or stationed someplace where you can't do that anyway), this is a way to get some help with those repeat startup expenses you aren't otherwise reimbursed for.
Kate's Two Cents: Why would the military do this? It’s easy – it’s a lot cheaper to give you the tools to fix your own window screens than to have the maintenance team fix them, or to write you “tickets” for having torn screens. (Believe me, it happens.) Ditto with the loaner lawn mower – do you really want to write a ticket to a pregnant woman whose husband has been gone for 6 months and her lawn mower has broken? By giving the folks who live in housing the tools and supplies they need to keep their housing in good shape, you’re preserving the value of the housing and keeping the bigger maintenance costs down. As military housing is being converted into PPV (Public/Private Venture) housing, the self-help stores seem to be disappearing. However, in places where the government housing is still owned by the government (often overseas), look for a self-help store!
The Legal Office.
My View: OK, you're probably not going to want to use this as a source for your dream team if you get caught up in the murder trial of the century. However, for basic legal advice and simple documents such as special powers of attorney, you should definitely check them out. The service is free, and even if you only use them for three-five fifty dollar items per year, that's still a few hundred bucks that won't have to come out of your pocket. The lower you are on the rank chain, the larger that amount of money is going to feel for you. Believe me.
Kate's Perspective: Another benefit is that these guys are professionals in the oddities of military life, such as when one spouses is a resident of one state and the other spouse has been the resident of three different states in one year, or how to write a will that won’t have to be rewritten every time we move. In addition, they understand when you call and say that you need X, Y and Z in two hours because some unexpected situation has just come up.
Base Thrift Stores.
My Two Cents: These are another resource that show up on most bases. Remember that limited weight allotment I mentioned in the first section? It's a serious thing. You definitely don't want to be going over and getting dinged for charges you weren't expecting. Which is why many military families are constantly downsizing before their next PCS. The result? Lots of cool stuff that folks can't unload at base yard sales winds up at these stores. Clothing, children's items, extra lamps and more will make their way to the shelves for your bargain shopping enjoyment. Some bases have more elaborate thrift stores than others, but they are always worth checking out even if it's for old T-shirts to snag for fifty cents and cut up for cleaning rags.
Kate's Take: Most thrift shops are run by either a spouses’ group or the service’s relief organization. Proceeds usually benefit scholarship funds or other family support activities. They are usually staffed by volunteers with one or two paid employees to be responsible for the finances and accounting.
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Space A Travel.
My Experience: Space A stands for “space available”. This means whatever seats if any they have on military flights after all the cargo and big dudes in camo get on the plane, is available for the snagging. Catches? There are several actually. Probably enough for an entirely separate article at some point. The condensed version is that you will need to check current regs to see when you can fly on your own with your children, and when you will be required to fly with your spouse. For example, now that David is retired I have to fly with him in order to use this benefit at all. Inside info? These are far from luxury planes most of the time. (Here's a picture of David and I taking a C-130 from Okinawa to Bangkok.) Also, the flights are sort of hit or miss and the schedule is at the complete whim of the United States Government. If you have the time to spend nearly a week waiting for a leg of your flight to be rescheduled, and pay for the on-base billeting (sort of like a dorm style hotel) from day to day, go for it. If it's a fifteen hundred dollar flight, and it will only cost you a hundred bucks worth of hotel stays while you wait it out, you'll still come out ahead, providing you're not short on leave time. We used it for several legs of our around the world trip. Again, not fancy. But it did save us a couple of grand, so we were happy to suck it up and have a new travel adventure tale to tell. Another time I've seen this come in handy for folks is if there's a family emergency. They'll usually make a reasonable effort to put you ahead of that 14th pallet of bandages if the cargo was surplus anyway and someone is terribly or terminally ill on the other end.
Kate's Info: One thing I’ve found with Space A facilities – some are wonderful and some aren’t so great. In addition, your attitude can have a huge impact on the service you receive. Go in with a smile and a kind word for the folks trying to organize the Space A flights and you’re a lot more likely to get the most up-to-date information. Keep in mind that not all Space A flights fly out of military airports. For example, there are many flights that leave out of Baltimore-Washington International Airport in Maryland. The complete and current list is available at this link, but you must have a CAC card to access this secured site. The official gouge on Space A is available in a couple of PDF’s available at the bottom of this page. The army has a this online resource, and there are one or two others you might find of interest. Kate also recommended a couple of titles to further research this and other veteran benefits. The first is Lawrence Webber's The Complete Idiot's Guide to Your Military and Veterans Benefits. The other is The Military Advantage: A Comprehensive Guide to Your Military and Veterans Benefits, by Christopher Michel.
Free Resource Books.
My Input: Usually available through the medical clinic or the family support office, numerous resource books are made available for free to active duty families. First Aid resource books and copies of the pregnancy and toddler years editions of the “What to Expect” books are all ones I've seen available for the asking at numerous bases.
Kate's Two Cents: I would add that some bases have great libraries with a wide variety of resources. Here's one example.
There are other more detailed services, to be certain. But for those just starting out in the military system, these should get you started on figuring out your frugal path to stretch that military paycheck as far as possible. Stay tuned for the next installment, and feel free to add ideas in the comment section below.
Additional photo credit: Trek Hound
Best of Wise Bread
When I was a kid, we used to fly Space A to Europe for Spring Break. We were delayed getting back a couple of times, so it was fortunate that we had understanding principals and good track records at our schools.
But it was a great experience, and I'd do it today if I were eligible.
KateNonymous - did you ever see that episode of Major Dad where he tries to take them all to Hawaii for vacation? I'm going to try to put the link here for anyone who wants to reminisce, or just see what Space A travel looks like: http://tv.yahoo.com/major-dad/show/31931/videos
Oh, darn, there goes another 20 minutes down the drain.
I'd forgotten about that episode. It's so accurate too. So many times you wait and wait and it still doesn't pan out.
Great list! We used the Self-help Store for grass seed when we lived in Beaufort, SC. We used the legal office many times for powers-of-attorney every time Steve got ready to deploy. Also used them for wills and later, when we no longer lived on base, we used them to help us come up with rental agreements so we could rent out our house when we moved.
You did not mention (so they may no longer be around) the base tax assistance, usually worked out of the legal offices. We used them to help us file our taxes both as active duty and as retired military. They were amazing - especially the year Steve retired and went from being a FL resident, to being a NC resident, and then a TX resident, back to NC, then working in MD while the family lived in NC. It was a mess for us to even consider, but they figured it all out for us. And their services were FREE!
One other thing for new military brides to consider is involvement with any organizations for wives. These groups are good at getting the word out when something free is available - such as when the base exchange is giving away items, or local restaurants are offering meals free to military dependents 12 and under with the purchase of one adult meal, etc.
I wish that I were more knowledgeable about what's available for retirees now. Any plans for future articles covering that area?
You know, Kate and I were just emailing back and forth today discussing what our next topic choice would be. Looks like we're going with spouse career options that fit in well with following the active duty member over hill and dale. (You know how that goes.) But retiree benefits are definitely worth exploring. (To tell you the truth, I need to learn more about it myself.) I'll make sure we add it to our list. Thanks for the suggestion. There's really so much to cover that this may very well turn into a semi-permananet thing. Who knows?
We're Navy so I'm not sure whether the other services are going this way, but since privatization, our base has done away with the Self-Help and handed everything over to the private company to handle. I'll spare you my opinion on how well this whole transition has been (sigh), but I suspect anyone living on a base with privatized housing will probably not have access to a self-help store. This is kind of a bummer, because the private company hasn't exactly stepped up and provided more services, so we are still on occasion fixing things on our own rather than deal with their not-so-helpful maintenance team.
Another great military freebie is if you are a Tricare Prime member most military hospitals offer a Routine Healthcare class and once you attend it you get a card. With that card you can take it to the hospital pharmacy and get free health products without a prescription including pedialyte, tylenol, eucerin, etc. Some of those items are really pricey, even at the commissary, and you don't have to spend any time with a doctor to get them.
That's great intell Heather, thanks. I'll be sure to let Kate know. We were discussing the health care system and how to navigate it as being one of the articles in our series. The military is an entirely different beast when it comes to health care, that's for sure.
All we have to do for over the counter drugs is fill out a form at the drive-up pharmacy outside the hospital. I can also ask our dr. to write a prescription for them. That's how we get all of our children's Tylenol. I've never heard of having to take a class. We are Prime with the Navy.
I never even knew those things were free at all. For any of us. Cool to know now, although I'm not sure if we still qualify as retirees. It's good that active duty folks do, though.
Yes, had to take a short little class. This is at Fort Hood, so other posts might operate a little differently.
Margarita, I don't know about either of those, but I would think you could get the information from the walk in clinic or the family support office.
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