Today we remember and honor the brave service members who made the ultimate sacrifice to guarantee our freedom.
Thank You from Everyone at Military Life News
Military Life News, Commissary Rewards and Military Discounts
Today we remember and honor the brave service members who made the ultimate sacrifice to guarantee our freedom.
Thank You from Everyone at Military Life News
Military life is demanding, but access to education doesn’t have to take a back seat. Today’s online learning opportunities are more flexible and accessible than ever, making it easier for service members and their families to pursue higher education, professional development, and certifications—no matter where military life takes them.
Whether you’re an active-duty service member or a military spouse, there are numerous programs and benefits designed to support your educational journey. Here’s a breakdown of what’s available and how to make the most of it.
Military spouses often put their careers and education on hold during active-duty years. However, online education provides flexibility and opportunity—whether to earn a degree, get certified, or pivot careers.
Whether you’re active duty or a military spouse, online education provides a path to career growth and personal development, no matter where the military sends you. From full college degrees to short-term certifications, there’s an option that fits your schedule, budget, and long-term goals.
Investing in education is one of the best ways military families can prepare for life after service, ensuring financial stability and personal fulfillment in the civilian world.
For many military families, the end of active-duty life marks the beginning of an exciting new chapter. While service members hang up their uniforms, military spouses often find themselves at a similar crossroads—ready to step into new roles, embrace stability, and reignite their professional ambitions.
The years spent moving duty station to duty station, managing households during deployments, and putting careers on hold are not wasted time. In fact, those years cultivated an incredible skill set that employers in the civilian workforce value. Post-military life offers military spouses a unique chance to pivot, grow, and launch a “second service” of their own—this time, focusing on personal career fulfillment.
Military retirement isn’t just a transition for the service member—it’s a shift for the entire family. With newfound stability, many spouses find they finally have the chance to plant roots and focus on long-term career goals that might have seemed out of reach during active-duty years.
Whether you’re re-entering the workforce after a long pause or seeking to change direction entirely, this next season of life can be the perfect opportunity to build a career that aligns with your passions and skills.
Certain industries recognize the unique strengths of military spouses and actively seek to hire them:
Actionable Strategies to Get Started
Depending on your career goals, certifications can give you a competitive edge:
Programs like MyCAA (for eligible spouses of active-duty service members) and Military Spouse Career Advancement accounts can help fund certifications. Even after active duty ends, many community colleges and state programs offer military spouse discounts.
Military spouses bring a wealth of skills to the table—skills forged by experience, sharpened by challenge, and ready for the next chapter.
Your second service starts now—and it’s one you can design on your own terms.
Whether you’re new to managing your finances or looking to make smarter money decisions, understanding the types of financial accounts offered by banks is a great first step. Banks and credit unions provide several account options designed for different needs, from daily spending to long-term savings. Below is a straightforward overview of these accounts—including their pros and cons—as well as a look at banks and credit unions tailored specifically for military service members and veterans.
A checking account is designed for everyday transactions, like paying bills, shopping, and direct deposits. Most offer debit cards and online banking.
Benefits:
Downsides:
Savings accounts are designed to help you set money aside while earning interest.
Benefits:
Downsides:
A money market account is a hybrid between a savings and checking account. It typically offers higher interest rates and limited check-writing abilities.
Benefits:
Downsides:
Also called savings certificates, CDs require you to deposit money for a fixed period (term) in exchange for a guaranteed interest rate.
Benefits:
Downsides:
Service members, veterans, and their families have access to several banks and credit unions that offer tailored financial services. These institutions understand the unique needs of military life, from frequent moves to deployments, and often provide lower fees, better rates, and military-specific programs.
The goal with utilizing any bank is to make the most of your hard-earned money. Whether that is through checking, savings or certificates, know you options and what would work best for you and your family.
Retiring from military service is a big transition in many ways – one of those ways is how healthcare is provided to the service member and their family members. TRICARE offers several health insurance options for retired service members and their eligible family members. Understanding these options is key to making the best choices for your healthcare needs during retirement.
If you’re a retired service member, you’re eligible for TRICARE benefits if you fall into one of these categories:
Once you retire, your TRICARE options change from what you had on active duty. Here’s a breakdown of the available plans:
1. TRICARE Prime
2. TRICARE Select
3. TRICARE For Life (TFL)
4. TRICARE Reserve Select (TRS) / TRICARE Retired Reserve (TRR)
5. US Family Health Plan (USFHP)
Dental and Vision Coverage
TRICARE Dental Program (TDP)
Vision Coverage
What Changes at Age 65?
At age 65, you typically become eligible for Medicare Part A and Part B, and TRICARE For Life becomes your primary TRICARE coverage. You must enroll in Medicare Part B to keep TRICARE coverage.
The military community encompasses a very small percent of the entire United States population. That includes everyone that has ever served and their family members too. As a result, the civilian population might not be as privy to military culture and they may have some misconceptions about military families.
If you happen to be a civilian strolling around this part of the Internet, welcome! I’m glad you came and hope you have a chance to learn a little more about the military community because there are a few misconceptions that I hope to straighten out. I’m hoping I can stomp out any of your misconceptions and shed some light to what the military community really is like.
I’ve heard around that military members tend to discriminate, but I think it’s a pretty big misconception. The military puts together all kinds of people from all different kinds of backgrounds to be brothers and sisters in arms. Despite the conflicts and challenges that our service members endure, they are very loyal to each other and their community. I believe this loyalty extends to everyone in their communities, military or not.
Military families tend to be patriotic because of the pride we have for our service members. I consider my husband my hero and I’m sure I speak for thousands of other military spouses when I say that. But, sometimes, our patriotic nature might be taken out of proportion and become another misconception. Just because I’m so proud of all the sacrifices that all our military members endure doesn’t mean I’m pro-war, if you know what I mean!
It is safe to say that a lot of us live inside an installation or in on-base/post housing, due to convenience and sometimes cost of living, but it isn’t for everyone. The misconception is that ALL military families keep to themselves and live away from the civilian population. On the contrary, there are a lot of military families living in civilian neighborhoods with lots of spouses working in civilian communities too.
Another misconception is that we tend to be loyal just to the military installation or military community. It happens that we relate to other military families because of the circumstances that we face, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t appreciate the community around us. I live off-post with my husband and have embraced the town we live in and take part by shopping locally and engaging in the community.
The misconception of military families being rich, needy or demanding is something I see from some mainstream media outlets. There are stories out there that we benefit a great deal financially from the military and other discounts…uh, I don’t even know where to begin with that. First thing, that misconception is the one I hope civilians understand as wrong. Facts and figures have been misconstrued and calculated in unusual ways to make it seem like we are gaining a lot monetarily. We’re not.
I wish I could do more for every business, organization and whoever else that has extended a helping hand to my family. I hope that they know their charity is being appreciated very much!
In this last misconception, big or small, military families are exactly the same as civilian families by being completely unique and different from one another, but still in the same boat.
I am truly convinced if you lined all of us up in a room (sans service member because, let’s face it, the haircut might give it away), a layperson would not be able to pick out the military family from the civilian family. With that being said, we all come from the same planet, so please don’t be afraid of us. Military families really want to fit in!
This is a previously posted article.
I’ve been living the military life for over a decade now. In that time, we’ve lived all over the world, including homes both on and off military bases.
While living on base definitely has it’s perks, like being completely surrounded by a community that “gets” situations unique to military life, I’m a strong advocate for living off base whenever possible.
Don’t get me wrong. We’ve enjoyed living in base housing. Being surrounded by mostly caring military families who understand about TDYs and deployments is great.
However, living on base, to me at least, means that my spouse is living where he works. He, and by extension our whole family, is constantly surrounded by military colleagues.
Again, that’s great when you need to have the always awkward “will you be my emergency contact” conversation with a person you met three seconds ago.
Still, living inside the military bubble 24/7 is a lot.
From here on out, I’m going to use “we” because when our family has lived on base, we have been way more tied to everything about my husband’s military job. Every second of every day is consumed with military-centered realities.
There is no time for him to be “off.” Sure, there are weekends and he can take leave. Which is great and much needed.
But also, he’s still shaving every day and prepping for the inevitable moment when we run into his CO randomly.
Shop talk is always happening. There is never a chance to just talk-talk, to talk about literally anything other than the military life. All of his conversations when we’ve living on base seem to revolve about work – even on weekends or when he’s on leave.
He is never not on duty, which means we are also always on duty. There is no break, no complete separation between work life and home life. Everything is military 24/7.
Right now, we live off base. We’re coming off of three years of living in military housing OCONUS.
We needed a break from being constantly “on.”
Sure, he’s still “on” duty and reachable by phone or email 24/7. But it feels different than when his boss lived just down the street. He has to leave our living space to physically go to work or have work conversations. It’s no longer an in-passing situation.
I can see how much he needed this space away from the grind of military duties. Living within the military 24/7 meant he was never able to switch it off, ever.
Now, he leaves and returns our home in civilian clothes. There is a clear, definite transition between job and home. When we walk outside, there is very little chance of getting roped into future planning with a colleague or CO.
There is no shop talk.
We often joke that we had our biggest home before we had kids, and it’s true. Our first on base house dwarfs our current civilian home.
But we had no choice in where we lived on base. Sure, we were given “options,” but it was mostly choice in name only.
We could go with A or B, this or that.
The lack of choice was especially apparent OCONUS. On base living wasn’t even a choice; rather the housing office made that decision for us. Then they gave us two choices, this one or that one.
Luckily, our options were somewhat different, a townhome or an apartment. Others stationed with us were sometimes given adjoining townhomes, and asked to choose. We also know people who were asked to select between two identical apartments, on the same and often in the same building.
There was no choice in where we were assigned to live.
Living off base has given us this freedom back.
Making our housing decisions during our last move was great. We could consider all sorts of factors and options that just weren’t a thing had we lived on base.
We talked about square footage, windows, yard space, schools and commute options. We talked about neighborhoods and green spaces.
We had true, radically different choices to make about where we were going to live. And it felt so freeing.
One of the biggest complaints I’ve heard in the last 12 years is that civilians just don’t “get” military families or military service.
Have you ever thought that maybe it’s because many military families are self-isolating in on base housing?
Right now, we have a few military-connected neighbors, but mostly our community is filled with folks who have no immediate connections to the DOD. It’s wonderful.
Beyond just being able to turn the military side of our lives off outside of working hours, it’s really cool to see the wonder and genuine curiosity if our neighbors eyes,
When we got dressed up for the ball last year, everyone came out to see us off. They had never seen those classic dress blues up close and personal. The kids wanted to examine his sword. And everyone thought it was incredible that I still got to dress up as a grownup; for everyone else that mostly stopped after their wedding day.
A few weeks ago, my husband casually mentioned that new neighbors (also military) would have been stuck in their old duty station under the recent stop movement orders had they moved any later. That thought never occurred to them before, that your whole life revolves around orders.
Over drinks a few months ago, someone asked about deployments. When I shared our deployment story, a refrain that common in our military community, my neighbors were stunned.
They had never really considered that someone they know and like had experienced something with the potential to be deadly. Hearing that I was only in my early 20’s, sending my spouse off to combat, knowing that people we knew wouldn’t make it home alive – I think it put things into a different perspective. Suddenly the casualty numbers became a little more real to them.
Living off base allows everyone to learn and grow freely as we build these important bridges together.
This is a previously posted article.
Summer PCS season is right around the corner and it is not too early to start to plan even before you receive those ever-elusive orders. I’ve always been super disorganized and looked with awe at my fellow military spouses with their PCS binders and elaborate coding systems for moving boxes. I even know one friend who tapes down the dimensions of a U-Haul truck on her floor and begins packing in plastic crates and loads them in her fake U-Haul until she packs the real one a few days before the move. It is really a genius system if you can be that organized. Here are a few tips for the less organized to help keep your sanity.
I loved all 30 of my moves (yes, it is a lot, but I was a military brat, served 12 years and became a military spouse. Yes, there are challenges, but I love seeing and living in new places. So, take the time to do some pre-planning and a little organizing for a stress free move. What are your favorite PCS tips? Post below to share.
Marguerite Cleveland is a freelance writer who specializes in human interest and travel stories. Her military experience is vast as the daughter of a Navy man who served as an enlisted sailor and then Naval Officer. She served as an enlisted soldier in the reserves and on active duty, then as an Army Officer. Visit her website www.PeggyWhereShouldIGo.com
Previously posted article
Self-care is essential for military spouses, who often face unique challenges like frequent moves, deployments, and periods of separation. Balancing these pressures with personal well-being can be overwhelming, but with the right tools and strategies, military spouses can take control of their health in multiple areas—financial, physical, mental, and emotional.
Managing finances can be a particular stressor for military families, especially when one spouse is deployed or away for long stretches. Building financial security and confidence starts with setting realistic goals and understanding available resources.
Maintaining physical health is vital for coping with the demands of military life. Regular physical activity improves mood, reduces stress, and helps combat the fatigue that can come with handling family responsibilities during deployments.
Mental health is one of the most important aspects of self-care, particularly for military spouses who often cope with the stresses of separation and frequent transitions. Cultivating resilience and finding ways to manage anxiety and stress is key.
Emotional well-being is closely tied to our connections with others. For military spouses, maintaining strong relationships with family, friends, and support networks is essential for emotional stability, especially during tough times like deployments.
Taking care of yourself as a military spouse requires a balance of financial, physical, mental, and emotional well-being. The unique demands of military life often mean that self-care is put on the back burner, but by focusing on these areas, military spouses can better manage stress, strengthen resilience, and maintain overall health as the person “left behind” and often the sole parent. Utilizing available resources, creating supportive routines, and taking time to invest in personal well-being will not only make spouses feel more grounded during difficult times but will also contribute to a more fulfilling and balanced military life.
Winter wellness is crucial for military families, who often juggle unique challenges like unpredictable schedules amongst an already busy and unpredictable schedule as the holidays. Maintaining physical and mental health during the colder months and the holiday season ensures that families stay resilient and ready to face whatever comes their way. Want to stay safe, sane and healthy this holiday season? Here are some tips for you!
Cold weather can make outdoor activities less appealing, but staying active is essential for physical health. Many bases have gyms or indoor recreational facilities available to service members and their families, some are free and some with a nominal fee. Look for group fitness classes, family-friendly activities, or even free fitness apps that focus on bodyweight exercises you can do at home.
If you’re stationed in a particularly cold and snowy climate, embrace winter sports like skiing or sledding for family-friendly outdoor fun.
The winter season often brings an increase in illnesses like colds and the flu. Ensure everyone in the family gets their annual flu vaccine, if able, which is typically available on base or at local pharmacies for free.
Incorporate immune-boosting foods into your meals, such as citrus fruits, leafy greens, and yogurt. If you have little ones, use creative methods like smoothies or fun presentations to encourage healthy eating.
Don’t forget to remind everyone about the importance of frequent handwashing. When sneezing or coughing, don’t cough into your hand (because that touches doorhandles, food, and everything else), but cough and sneeze into you elbow. This shields those around you and lessens sharing the potential germs.
Vitamin D is critical to immunity building, so if there are warmer periods when getting outside is possible, soak in the sun while getting some vitamin D but also staying warm.
Many people experience low moods during the winter due to reduced sunlight, and military families, particularly those stationed in northern or overseas locations, may be more affected. Combat SAD by spending time outdoors during daylight hours, using light therapy lamps, and prioritizing regular sleep patterns. The holiday season can also heighten stress for families separated by deployments; using video calls to connect with loved ones can help maintain a sense of togetherness.
Military families have access to resources that can help with winter wellness. Programs like Military OneSource offer free counseling for mental health support. Base fitness centers often host wellness challenges or seminars. Check if your installation offers free or low-cost winter activities in the local area through the MWR or even the Information, Ticket and Tours (ITT) center.
Establishing a routine helps balance family life, especially during the busy holiday season. Incorporate time for self-care, whether it’s setting aside a quiet moment to read, meditating, or enjoying a hot bath. Encourage family members to join in with relaxing activities like watching movies or baking healthy treats. Planning your days with intention can prevent the holiday rush from becoming overwhelming.
This also includes self-care. Plan for everyone else, yes, but also prepare and plan for some downtime for yourself.