This article is a blog post

What I do know about what I didn’t know about retirement

I often hear from friends who are scared of all the perceived challenges facing them in retirement. Or they read something on Facebook, which may or may not be accurate, and they get freaked out about the transition from military life to civilian life.

I see those same posts. Mostly, they go something like this:

“I am so stressed out about my spouse’s retirement. I just want to cry all the time.”

Or:

“I don’t know how I am going to handle all this.”

Or:

“We have no idea what we will do next.”

Of course we are all scared and nervous when we embark on anything new and unknown. That’s human nature.

The thing is, you don’t know what you don’t know.

But, fellow spouses, I’ve been there, done that. My husband has been officially retired for just over 16 months now. Our transition definitely isn’t complete, but it’s well on its way.

And now I DO know what I didn’t know.

Here’s my top 10 lessons learned during our transition so far:

  1. Deciding where to live is hard, but don’t overthink it. On the other hand, you might think you know exactly where you want to go or what you want to do, but trust me … that can change a dozen times. The one-year paid government storage upon retirement is the biggest benefit there is. It buys you time to figure out where you will live, and if that place is the right fit for you.
  2. Don’t worry so much about household goods. Our stuff all survived storage fine, and some of it was there for 6 ½ years. And if it didn’t survive? Eh, it’s only stuff. Once we got it back we ended up getting rid of half of it anyway.
  3. Money isn’t everything. Lots of retirees tend to take the first job that comes along because they feel pressured to support their family like they always have. And for some, they have no choice but to work right away due to financial constraints. But how much money do you really need to live on? Many families can probably find a way to make their finances work without their retiree having to move right into a second career, or at least not a fast-paced, high stress second career. This is another area where priorities are important. If at all possible, give your retiree time to figure out exactly what he or she wants to do next career-wise.
  4. Keep current in your career field, and figure out your own plans for when military life ends. This time, I mean you – the spouse who isn’t retiring but has been following the military around for the past 20-plus years. Even if it’s just a part-time job, try to have some recent employment on your resume before retirement.
  5. Don’t get caught in the trap of comparing other people’s lives with yours. This is true in life in general, of course, but sometimes we all need a reminder that no one else’s experience is any more or less valid than our own.
  6. Civilians are not all annoying idiots who just want to thank you for your service and move on. Yes, it is hard to fit in when you’re not living on base anymore or not surrounded by other military families. But give ordinary civilians a chance – most of them are actually really nice people.
  7. Retirement is about the person who is actually retiring. They are the one going through the biggest transition, no matter how daunting this might all seem to you.
  8. Retirees need a hobby. And friends. They don’t have that built-in network in a military unit anymore. Help your retiree find his or her niche.
  9. A high VA disability rating comes with a cost. Many people hope for a high rating, especially sometimes spouses who are thinking about finances. That’s again human nature. But remember this: A high rating means your retiree is broken. Perhaps irrevocably. Don’t ever wish for that.
  10. Military retirement is not the end of the world. It’s not devastating. It’s not impossible. In hindsight, it’s not even that hard. It’s just another transition, and we’ve all been through enough of those to know that, eventually, it all works out.
The Term End Sprint

By Amy Nielsen

That moment you realize you have not only hit the sophomore college slump, but that it exactly coincides with exam week, presentation week, new client week, travel week, new sport season kickoff and husband on extra double shifts week.

Yeah. That week.

I already feel like I haven’t slept and it’s not even Monday yet.

The only saving grace is that the public school system is on spring break this week here so my homeschooled older girl doesn’t have swim practice on top of this all.

Somewhere in there I am supposed to fit in at least two medical visits for myself. I’ve been not so well lately and my medical team is working up a possible new diagnosis to add extra chaos to my existence. This means adding at least one day-long procedure into this mix. Not gonna happen.

It’s times like this, when I am recovering from a medical flare, when every single appointment seems to need to be on the same day, when I have already written 15 pages on the first five questions of a 10-question take home exam, when even the set in stone ever wobbly military schedule rears its ugly head, that I realize - I got this.

I have a plan. I have time. I have the intestinal fortitude to do what it takes to make each project this week be the best work I can provide at this juncture. I am not shrinking from the challenge. Rather it is buoying me up to greater heights of productivity and work that surpasses my norm. I am working this tool box of chaos quenching tricks I have gathered in my time on this planet like an octopus with an escape plan.

This is not to say I enjoy working under pressure.

Ok, I lied. I’m supposed to say that I don’t like to work under pressure. That it kills me and that I wish I had it less crazy.

Actually, I do. I love it. I love the pace, the drive, the dedicated focus that this kind of hard core, crazy living requires. I thrive on it. It is also the part of me that loses people very quickly as I go farther down the rabbit hole into the caterpillar’s world of the last throws of a deadline.

I can’t stay here for long. It is not really all that healthy to be working this hard, for anyone. But like any training, like any coaching situation, and learning environment that stretches you – that teacher asks you to sprint at some point. It builds up reflexes. It sharpens the focus. It shines glaring lights on shortcomings and weaknesses.

It’s no different in academia. This end of term insanity is all about learning to work in the hardest conditions you will face. It’s the sprint at the end of the marathon. It’s learning if you really have the need to put in every effort possible.

Now, in this final week stretch of the term, with everything barreling down on me like that proverbial freight train, I feel like I am not only managing, but thriving in a way I haven’t in decades. I have always been a project junkie. I was a theater designer for a while, and then I did special events. I enjoy having a new focus and a whole tool box of solutions to creatively toss at it under the pressure cooker of a short deadline and meager budget. That budget in this case is my aging body’s ability to bounce back after an all-nighter spent with doctored caffeine and power point slides. Or not.

I have spent a large amount of time over the last few years working very hard to not be in this overdrive, break neck pace all the time. I have worked to deepen my well of peace and stamina so I don’t end up burning myself out when I light the candle at both ends – with a blow torch. I learned to not allow the chaos to become disordered.

The mind has more tools and tricks than ever before, the body is working on its second wind, and the clock is ticking. I have exams to write, presentation scripts to edit, client materials to gather, and kids to feed once in a while.

Bring it on, I got this. With the peace and grace and stamina no twenty-something can touch.

Now hiring military spouses: Amazon

Need a job you can carry with you during and after PCS? Amazon may have the answer.

The online shopping giant hires virtual customer service representatives who work at home, and they have a job site dedicated specifically to military spouses.

The work from home positions include two to four weeks of paid training, seasonal and referral bonus opportunities and start at $10 – 11 per hour with bonus opportunities.

Virtual customer service employees must be willing to work holidays and weekends, hold a high school diploma or equivalent and have basic typing, phone and computer navigation skills.

Amazon is even in need of agents who fluently speak foreign languages. Currently the job board is in search of employees who speak Japanese, French and German. 

Amazon also has several brick and mortar fulfillment centers that hire employees too.

To learn more about jobs available to military spouses at Amazon, visit https://www.amazon.jobs/en/landing_pages/mil-spouse

To Facebook or not to Facebook, that is the question.

Anyone else struggling with the Facebook decision? To delete or not to delete, that is the question.

I’ve had a handful of friends announce that they planned to go dark, a kind of semi step into life without posts but without deleting their account completely. Others have disappeared from Facebook with nary a farewell post.

When the news broke recently that Cambridge Analytica was collecting, keeping and using our data against us, people were aghast. But did you ever notice the weird toy of the moment you searched on Amazon seemed to haunt you in the advertisements on Facebook? That the set of shelves you put in your cart on Overstock.com was suddenly advertised every single day on your Facebook feed. Yeah, it wasn’t exactly a secret you were giving yourself over to advertisers with every letter you typed.

Though I still question how, and why, my non-seafood searches led advertisers to believe I would be interested in fishing lures. That ad popped up far too often to make me comfortable.

And Facebook isn’t the only creepy internet stalker. According to a recent report by CNN there are 2,500 to 4,000 data brokers in the U.S. who buy and sell personal data a trade known as surveillance capitalism.

Think Facebook is collecting a lot of info? Your phone is the biggest tattle tale. According to the CNN report your cell phone can give up your place of business, home address and any place you spend time. Uber, CNN reported, used the free flowing information from cell phones to track its users’ one night stands.

Yep, forget worrying if your best friend will give up your secrets. Your phone will tell everything.

So, in this age of digital information vomiting our first instinct is to give up the site that seems most obviously turned against us, Facebook. But in reality, it doesn’t seem like walking away from one site is going to make much of a difference.

And few of us are willing to leave that cell phone at home, turn off the internet and go dark. Technology has spoiled us. It is easy. It is convenient and dang, who doesn’t like sharing a good meme?

Instead, I have accepted a challenge by a friend to go what you might call, grey. I’m not deleting Facebook. But I’m not checking it every day either. I’m not going to post my thoughts or reactions to recent events in the news and I’m not going to document my child’s every victory.

Instead, I’m going to be more selective about what I share and the photos I post. I’m going to make a point to call and email the friends I am on Facebook to keep up with in the first place. A 10-minute phone call is far more satisfying than a one-line response on a photo. 

Facebook has its advantages. We can spread important news quickly to the right people. When a distant family member is ill it is helpful to have those constant updates and photos. When there was a major bus accident near our hometown several weeks ago, we were able to mobilize volunteers and collect needed items in two hours flat.

I think Facebook has its time and place. But we don’t need to use it everywhere and all day long. Use Facebook as a tool, not a crutch. Turn it off, talk to your friends over coffee, with your phones left in your purse. Call your second cousin and ask her how the 5K was, don’t just like her photo.

And print that photo of your kid in the class play and put it on the refrigerator. It will bring you far more joy on a daily basis than logging in to a phone ever will.

Military Children need supported by everyone, including the civilian community

Two million children have had a parent deploy since 2001.

Hear me as I speak. Two. Million.

That number is staggering. That is two million children who have watched a parent walk away never knowing if they would see them again.

That is two million children who have stayed up at night worrying about their parent.

That is two million children who have caught a glimpse of the news or hushed words of an explosion, a helicopter crash, a battle and sat anxiously, wondering if their parent was still alive.

That is two million children who may have cried themselves to sleep, who may have had trouble concentrating in school due to deployment, who may have finally made a close friend only to move away weeks later.

These children have given up their mom or dad so that the rest of us can be safe from harm. These children will never know what it is like to graduate with the same kids they knew in kindergarten. These children have given up stability and security for a life designed with the needs of the nation put before their own.

These children need to be supported not just by their military community but by the nation as a whole.

April, the national Month of the Military Child, is a great time to help our civilian counterparts understand what they can do to help our military children.

Currently there are 12 million children of active duty parents, worldwide. Nearly 80 percent of those children attend public schools.

Roughly 1/3 of those school-age military children display signs of being anxious, worrying and cry more frequently. Schools located on military bases know how important it is to support these children during a deployment.

Outside the gate, sometimes that message, that understanding is lost.

AASA, The School Superintendents Association, has an entire toolkit on its website to help educators understand how to best support these students, especially during deployment. The AASA website says: 

·  A positive school environment, built upon caring relationships among all participants—students, teachers, staff, administrators, parents and community members—has been shown to impact not only academic performance but also positively influence emotions and behaviors of students.

·  Supporting the military child takes a school-wide effort, and professional development opportunities to inform school staff of the academic and social-emotional challenges military children face.  

School-wide. Community-wide. Positive environment. These are words and directions we need to share with the civilian schools our children attend.

When my husband retired and we moved to a town more than an hour from the closest military base, I figured our military children would be an anomaly. I was wrong, there are more than a dozen military kids in our tiny civilian school, several who have parents currently deployed.

As a military spouse I see it as my job to make sure these children, all of our military children, are cared for and loved in their time of service. It is your job too.

Step up at your civilian school as a parent volunteer and make sure there are programs in place to support military children who attend. Reach out to other military families in the area. Reach out to your principal and superintendents to make sure they are aware of the needs of these families and see what you can do to help.

Military children give of themselves every day their parent serves. We need to make sure we have their back.

Access the AASA toolkit at: www.aasa.org

Congress bans restaurants from sharing tips

If your newsfeed has been dominated this week by accusations by porn stars, news on Russia and the Koreas you may have missed the news that was most relevant to you.

Congress blocked employers from taking any amount of tips that diners leave for waiters.

Last year the Department of Labor suggested that restaurants be allowed to share tips between servers and cooks meaning the restaurant owner would be allowed to keep some of that money as well. The department also maintained that restaurants would only qualify for tip sharing if every worker was paid the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.

Workers rallied together and complained that the tip skimming would lower their overall wages. Congress seems to have agreed and wrote language into the recently passed spending bill that says employers may not keep tips.

The bill does, however, make it ok to pool tips of all employees and split them among the entire staff, to include kitchen workers and bussers. Again, to qualify for this every employee must also make full minimum wage.

The U.S. may see a shift in pay for restaurant workers. Currently workers who receive tips also receive a minimum federal wage of $2.13 an hour. Seven states have abolished the rule and required tip receivers to receive the same minimum wage as everyone else.

Other states and cities are expected to follow. Washington D.C., Michigan and New York will vote on the issue this year.  

Retirement Ceremony – who, what, where, when and maybe, not at all

I’m not going to lie. I was disappointed, and even a little angry, when my husband said he didn’t want a retirement ceremony.

 

There were many reasons behind his decision. One was that his commander and many of the people he was close to in his unit would either be PCS’ing or gone on leave or TDY at the time (although they did offer to do it before PCS season). Another reason was that retirement is a busy time – between PCS’ing and attending briefings and outprocessing, there is a lot to do. But, really, it just boiled down to the fact that he didn’t want that much attention.

 

He wanted to go out quietly, without a lot of formalities, much the way he had served his career as a Green Beret.

 

I wanted him to have the ceremony. I thought he “deserved” it. I wanted our two kids to hear stories and see praise being heaped upon their dad. Mostly, though, I thought it would bring closure to all of us.

 

Sixteen months later, I’ve come to terms with the fact that my husband didn’t have a ceremony or a big celebration. I’ll admit I get a little jealous hearing about my friends who had a wonderful ceremony and a kick-ass party after. And sometimes I still feel like all of us – my husband included – didn’t get the closure we needed.

 

But in the big picture, that choice was his. What he deserved was to end his career in the way he saw fit.

 

There is no rule or regulation that states anyone has to have a retirement ceremony, and there is no rule or regulation that states exactly what a retirement ceremony must include or not include. There are guidelines and recommendations and traditions that vary by service – but those are just that, guidelines and recommendations and traditions.

 

While my husband didn’t have his own ceremony, I’ve been to several. Each one I’ve attended was different and unique in its own way. The best were short, sweet and to the point, with a few small personal touches thrown in. And every single one made me cry.

 

Here are some tips and things to consider when planning a retirement ceremony (or deciding whether to have one at all):

 

Where do we have it? If your retiring service member does opt to have a ceremony, he or she is in control. Some bases do have monthly “group” ceremonies, but you can still have your own less official ceremony at another time and date. Most commonly, a retirement ceremony happens on base. But some people retire after jumping out of an airplane. Others do it on a ship or in front of a historical building or in a location that has deep meaning to them. Some just opt for the unit conference room and call it a day.

 

Who plans the ceremony? This can vary as well, but generally someone from the unit will help with the planning. If you’re lucky, they’ll do the whole thing with input from the service member and spouse. At the very least, the unit will plan a basic ceremony with the commander as the speaker, a script to follow and a location on base. They should also help with sending out invitations via email and, if necessary, ensuring visitors have base access. If you want to get fancy and do something unique, you’ll probably have to get more involved.

 

What should the ceremony include? Again, this is up to the service member (and to some degree the commander). A basic ceremony usually includes an award, a short speech by the commanding officer, music, reading of the retirement orders, and a speech from the retiree. But other speakers can be invited (the better the speaker knows the retiree the better), special songs played, or anything, really, that doesn’t take away from the overall dignity of the occasion. Spouses can help decide the program, too. A friend of mine secretly put together an awesome slideshow of her husband’s career that was shown at the ceremony.

 

What’s my role during the ceremony as a spouse? Generally speaking, none. In a traditional ceremony, you might be presented with flowers or an award or letter of appreciation. Some retiring service members choose to present their spouses with a gift.

 

What do I, the spouse, wear? Take cues from the uniform your retiring service member will wear. Choose something that will make you feel your most beautiful or most handsome, but at the same time be comfortable and not out of character. Do you.

 

Can the spouse present the retiree with a gift during the ceremony? You can. But you that’s best saved for another time - maybe at a gathering afterward with family and friends, or just when the two of you are alone.

 

What’s the best gift to give kids during the ceremony? Maybe I’m old school, but my answer here is none.

 

What gift should we give our visiting guests? Again, my answer is none. Except for maybe a speaker who traveled to be in attendance. And that gift should be given separately, not during the ceremony.

 

Should we serve food and drinks at the ceremony? Think of it as similar to a promotion ceremony – punch, cake and maybe a few finger foods will do.

 

Should we have a party or dinner afterward? Many people opt to have a celebration with family and friends after the ceremony or at a later date, but it is by no means expected. This can be a great way to mark the occasion in a more casual and fun way, present gifts and share funny stories. Just remember that this is an entirely separate event from the ceremony and the unit plays no role. Also remember it’s not “mandatory” to spend a lot of money on such an event. If you do opt to have a party, guests are just as likely to appreciate a backyard BBQ as a formal dinner, if not more so.

 

The bottom line when it comes to a retirement ceremony? This day is all about the person retiring. Let them mark the occasion in the way they best see fit.

 

 

Being a voice for the voiceless, advocacy in fee-for-service work

By Amy Nielsen

My profession, clinical nutrition, is one that professes to service the general population. What we do is rarely covered by insurance, so we for the most part work on a fee-for-service model. This precludes a huge swath of the public if we want to charge a living wage for our services. This is a problem for most complementary health professions.

The services we offer could, and eventually will, turn around the epidemics of disease we are currently mired in. However until we can offer those service across the board to all populations, especially those underserved and in the most dire need of help, while making a living wage, we will not even make a ripple in the high fructose corn syrup pond.

Unlike many of my classmate in my Master’s program, I live in a rural community. Most of the other students live in or around a major metropolitan east coast city: New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, or Washington DC. My client base can’t afford my living wage. The living wage charged by some fellow students is more than many in my community make in a week. While I operate on a sliding scale and have offered barter for services, I can’t pay my electric bill with eggs. Of course, with all of the finger-tip information about what to eat, who needs a nutritionist anyway, right? It’s a privilege.

You might be thinking, wait, isn’t my doctor supposed to give me important information about nutrition? Maybe you have seen a registered dietitian for your diabetes management. I’ve even seen hometown pharmacies with health and wellness coaches giving nutrition advice. Guess what, they are all using the same information and it’s flat out wrong - and worse if pressed – they will admit it. There are countless studies proving they are using flawed materials.

My beef in this blog isn’t with the biomedical field who still sees us nutritionist as quacks and hacks at best and dangerous competitors at worst. Of course most of them have had less than ten hours of nutrition training in their entire 12 year medical academic careers. They are having to deal with big pharma and insurance companies daily – they don’t have time to deal with the easy stuff like eating more broccoli or drinking more water.

My beef is with my fellow nutritionist who are not freaking out on these doctors who are giving out terrible nutrition advice to patients thereby perpetuating and creating more disease.

What does terrible nutrition advice have to do with my fellow nutritionist, fee for service, and rural communities? I’ll tell you. Rural communities, like the populations in many high density urban areas, have higher rates of all of the current major health epidemics because they have less access to healthy options for food. If we as nutritionists don’t advocate – loudly – for our clients who are underserved, why the heck are we practicing? If we can’t help the folks deepest in the trenches of disease brought on by a system that keeps artificial foods cheap, delivers them a host of preventable diseases, exasperated by pharmaceutical drugs with worse side effects than the original disease, there is really no point in doing this work.

I’m not saying cut down our fees, destroy our livelihood, or only do sliding scale work. I’m saying step up to the plate and fight to get covered under insurance so we can help rise all boats on our health tide. Refuse to be limited to working only with other complementary health professionals also working on a fee for service basis. Be adversarial. Challenge the biomedical doctors to provide data and research for their protocols like they require us to do.

Until we of the complementary medical fields demand the same rigor the biomedical field does of our modalities, until we demand that they take responsibility for their patient’s lives rather than hospital or practice bottom lines, they will continue to serve the insurance and pharmaceutical companies.

This is true for any career field that lingers outside the norms accepted as mainstream. We must advocate for ourselves and each other. 

Advocacy starts with a single question. Advocacy doesn’t have to be argumentative. Advocacy must be supported with factual evidence based research. Advocacy must encompass compassion for the greater good. Sound individualized nutrition is hard and takes time. Both on the part of the practitioner and client. Until nutritionist embrace advocacy for the underserved, and start demanding services for the most needy clients, the field will remain that of the privileged.

Surviving back handed gifts of the group project

By Amy Nielsen

It’s midterm week and we are starting to get underway with the dreaded group project. There are eight of us this time. Not only is it a group project, it’s an hour-long, live group presentation in guise of a court case. Did I mention there are eight of us on the team?

Sweet baboons on a brick if I make it out of this alive I will have earned my blankity blank Master’s degree.

I learned a very important lesson today. I was awoken to the fact, yes fact I think now, that I am completely not the person I once was. I met her face to face today and I think I am very definitely not there anymore.

This project is being coordinated long distance and then culminates with the live group presentation the last day of class on campus. For the majority of the time working on this we are at our remote locations scattered around the east coast. Which means all communication is done via this little box in front of me.

I used to work in a highly technical field, lighting design. I left the field just as a huge technology shift happened, the blue LED was invented and the Silicon Valley tech boom got hot. I am – now – a died in the thrift store wool sweater, mason jar tea drinking, rural woods living, luddite of sorts. Which is terribly odd.

One might think I am going to say that I left the field because the tech got away from me. But the reality is that I left because the art went out of it for me. I’m an energy freak. I dig vibrational energy, be it sound waves from a grooving drum circle, the tangible waves of light in incandescent bulbs or fire, the heat waves on a still August day. Lighting before LEDs was a very different art because the frequency of the light was different.

LEDs, the fixtures they are housed in, and the programs needed to control them, are so above my frequency now that my little ole central nervous system says no, Ma’am. It messes with my circadian rhythm. Too much time on the computer and I go tilt. Inevitably I end up on here a lot more than is healthy for me.

So I left the art I loved because the instruments didn’t sing to me the same way. I got too wrapped up in having to learn new tech. When I left the field of lighting design, it broke my heart. I found my heart in the human body, how it works, and how it is so very cool. I moved away from that higher energy because it didn’t serve me to one that does.

What does this have to do with this exercise in stamina of a group project? Eight means someone becomes the defacto team organizer. She is undoubtedly extremely efficient in her role of herding us cats. She is very tech savvy and very much of this new web-based everything world that I just shudder at. Her energy is about nine thousand times faster than mine.

Now I am by no means a complete computer neophyte. I do manage to write this weekly blog, I have a very active Facebook account where I am often reminded that I overshare and crosspost, and I can manage complicated EBSCO database searches. I cannot, however, produce anything more than a basic word document.

I emailed the gal in charge of the slides for the link to where she wants me to put what I have worked on for the last two weeks. To which, rather than just giving me the link, she replies with all of the places she has already posted the link and why haven’t I seen any of them and shouldn’t I know better?

Asking much forgiveness and with great noises that I do in fact get her 7,000 notices, emails, texts, and message board posts about what she is waiting on from us, I asked her to please give me the link so I can try to figure out how to copy a slide into the thing she has already set up for us to use.

I feel like I am getting a side eye with an exasperated humph from my gmail account as I open the reply to see the link.

I click. Something happens to my laptop and it magically opens a window into her world I guess. I click on the file she has labeled for me. I see a slide. Something I recognize. So I do as I do in my presentations and I copy and paste a slide from my computer into that place.

Somehow all 22 I have created appear in the new window. It looks like confetti appearing on the screen to me. Kind of pretty in a mesmerizing way.

Wait, I was trying to copy one slide. Do I dare try to delete a slide? On hell no. I got them there. No going back now. I’ll just blow it up. Never delete on someone else’s stuff.

I can’t find a save button. It’s nowhere. I cautiously explore a drop down box. Nope, not there. Decision time. I’m a big girl and I must trust in google docx. I send up a prayer to St. Bartholomew, patron saint of bookbinders, and close the tab.

I count to ten. Don’t ask why. You do it too.

I open the tab.

The slides are still there!

*BING*

I am curtly informed by our defacto Capitan that I am going to have to up my power point game if I want my slides included in the presentation, and by the way I only get ten. They are due by Friday, midnight.

I sip my chaga tea from my mason jar and shift my thrift store wool sweater around. I enjoy not running at that frequency anymore. If I make it through this presentation, I will have earned my Master’s degree.

Competitive hiring in retail? Yes

Since Congress approved a tax cut in January that benefitted businesses, more employees are reaping the benefits in their paychecks.

At last count 15 national companies are giving thousands of employees up to a $1,000 bonus. Those companies include JetBlue, AT&T and American Airlines.  There are dozens more local companies across the country that have done the same.

Other corporations, both national and local, have announced increases to pay and 401K accounts.

 Americans for Tax Reform, a nonprofit created in 1985 at the request of President Reagan urges legislators to commit to opposing efforts to increase income taxes on individuals or businesses.

The ATR has compiled a list of every employer granting bonuses after January’s tax cut. Find the list here: https://www.atr.org/list

More money in employees’ pockets means better workers will stay and perform well. Poor wages mean less workers or no workers, a hard lesson learned by Toys ‘R’ Us this week as the retail giant announced that it will close after 70 years. The store had long paid just minimum wage with little extra incentive. Would-be employees found employment elsewhere with better benefits.

Now, with the national unemployment rate at a record low of 17.1 percent, many retail stores are desperate for good help, and they are willing to compensate to keep hard workers on board. Which means if you are looking for work in retail, it is a competitive market and you can use that to your advantage.

For military spouses, this is great news. As you conduct your job search in retail work, interview with a variety of locations and ask specific questions about the packages and pay being offered. You may find that a manager who recognizes the value of an experienced military spouse is willing to sweeten the hiring package.

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