I'm Broke

This phrase can mean so many different things.  I will admit to managing my money wrong occasionally and saying I’m broke shortly before payday.  I don’t blame anyone but myself though and don’t want to be bailed out by others.  Honestly, I am never truly broke.  We have some money saved and I budget well enough to have the money for everything we need.  Sometimes I may overspend on wants and realize that I need to skip going out to eat for a bit or maybe not buy something that we don’t need.  I constantly see others complaining how they are broke and need to sell something from their home in order to buy groceries or have gas until pay day.  This baffles me most times, because these are often the same people showing off all of their purchases every couple of days or asking which one should I buy.  They seem to always be at the store purchasing more things they can’t possibly need.  It seems most have never learned the difference between wants and needs.  I need a home, food, and some clothes on our backs.  I don’t need a nice fancy car, name brand clothes, tons of toys, 20 pairs of shoes, multiple purses, or even that Starbucks or dinner out.  I am not saying there is anything wrong with those things but if you can’t afford it, don’t buy it.  When I sit down at least twice a month and figure the budget, the first thing I do is make sure every bill is paid first, and then I deduct my grocery and gas budget.  If I am lucky enough to have money left, I can go out and buy stuff that I want or more likely what my kids want.  Most young couples seem to buy what they want and get to the bills and cry they don’t make enough money. Really?  Base pay for a brand new E1 is $17,611, add to that BAS, BAH, and clothing allowance and you are getting a annual amount of at least $33,041.80 and that is if you spend the first year out of basic as an E1.  That would take a pretty lousy soldier to not make at least E2 or more likely E3.  I am not saying $33k is a lot of money to make in a year but it is a manageable amount for a small family.  There shouldn't be people constantly in a panic trying to figure out how to make ends meet.  The thing people need to remember is that bills come first and it is important to make a budget, stick to it, and even include savings (even$1 a day adds up).  After you figure a budget, you can see how much money you have left to spend on extras but please avoid credit cards and mounting debt.  If deployed, take advantage of using the extra pay to save towards purchasing a card or if you have racked up debt, get it paid off.  There is rarely a reason for someone to be truly broke.  Things do happen and unforeseen circumstance change things but most of what I see is people who have never learned how to manage money.  I am attaching a video http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=53292083612 and remember you can get financial planning and budget help through ACS if you need to learn how to make a budget.

Seen and Not Heard

I am a pretty laid back parent.  I give my kids a lot of freedom and allow them to have fun most of the time.  They also learn through their mistakes.  I am the type of parent that lets them fall or fail at things and then helps them to take their experience and learn from it.  I am fine with hearing and seeing kids most of the time and understand that they will make noise and that they are present and should be included most of the time.  There are however a few times that they should either not attend or be seen and not heard.  I had the joy of going to a meeting recently and childcare was not provided.  This means that many people brought their children along.  I can handle a toddler being chased after and a baby crying but cannot understand older children running around the room and screaming during a meeting.  Their parents seemed to be oblivious to the bad behavior and didn’t seem interested in teaching their children to behave while adults were talking.  I am pretty sure, when I was a child, my mother would have removed me from the room and probably beaten my ass for that behavior.  My 2 children both under the age of 5 were able to sit and for the most part were quiet and played with a toy.  I always make sure if they are coming along for a boring adult thing to have some form of quiet entertainment.  They would not be found during a 1 hour meeting running around and being so disruptive that others could not hear the speaker.  If your children are bored and disruptive, remove them from the room and maybe try teaching them some respectful behavior.  If you aren’t willing to do that, please in the future get a sitter.  It shows disrespect on the part of a parent to allow this behavior and you are doing your children a disservice by not teaching them how to act in certain situations.

The Breaking Point

I know everyone has that point where they say I'm done.  The real question is how do you portray yourself to the rest of the world, when this happens?  It seems right after the guys deploy, it hits after 1 to 2 weeks and it is like everyone goes a little crazy.  Facebook and any other social networking site is a great place to see this.  One day everyone is coping fine and then the next it is bickering over who has the right to be more stressed.  I have said it before but deployment is hard on everyone.  Those who don't have children are unable to understand the struggle for those that have kids.  Then you have those who have been there before and have older children trying to explain to the first time deployment mommies the challenges that they have experienced and are experiencing now.  A lot of wives have this sense that nothing could be worse than their experience and it is because they are suffering tunnel vision.  You get so focused on your own challenges that you forget to be supportive of those in a different situation. 

The young wife, going through their first deployment is hurting and going through the same separation as everyone else.  It is unfair to say you have no idea.  Unless you know all of her inner workings, you may not realize she has other issues or that him being gone has left her depressed and with way too much time to linger on him being gone.   She can’t sleep because she isn’t used to being alone all of the time.  It is lonely and she feels isolated from others.  Often times those with kids tell her how much worse it could be and to get over it.  Well to those that would say that, maybe you need to get of your high horse and back off.  Let her grieve and post annoying little quotes about love or make it a point to say how much she misses and loves him a hundred times a day.  She isn’t forcing you to care.  She is merely expressing her emotions.  If it is that big of an issue, don’t be online friends.

Then you have the young mother with one child.  She is seeing her baby have problems with daddy being gone and immerses herself in her child and spends her time focused on him being gone.  That situation sucks.  How do you explain to a toddler why they can't see daddy?  She gets emotional and will often isolate herself from anyone but her family.  At least she spends part of her day focused on her child and house but even that is stressful.  Your poor baby crying for daddy and in any free time, her mind automatically starts thinking about him.  She misses her husband and has the pain of seeing a child miss daddy as well.  She may still get online and post a lot of love poems and how she can’t wait for him to call.  Once again you are not forced to pay attention and if you can’t handle being a friend, do a favor and don’t be.  Walk away, in the end she will be better off.

Then you have the wife with more than one child but they are still young.  It is easy to get frazzled when you have a baby that depends on you for every need and a toddler or preschooler that can't understand what a year means.  This is an incredibly stressful situation.  This person has little or no time for herself or own thoughts.  She is too busy with the temper tantrums of an upset child who doesn't know how to cope and still running a household, caring for a baby, and trying to hold her own emotions back, so she doesn't cause her child any extra hurt.  She tries to hold back her feelings about the deployment whenever the kids are around and there is rarely a minute in the day where someone doesn’t have demands.  This is probably the group mostly likely to snap on those who say how hard a deployment is that don’t yet have kids.  I think it is because when she has that second to think about it, that she can’t see how anyone has it worse.  After all when does she get time to herself to cope with all of these emotions?  It is probably best when you see an outburst online that you offer support and help.  It is hard to deal with kids without a deployment.

The next groups are those wives with some experience.  They have a couple of kids (or more) and have a deployment or 2 (or more) behind them.  They are a wealth of knowledge and often trying to give advice and not trying to make you feel bad.  Even if sometimes it comes across condescending, they are only trying to explain how it is for them and how it was.  Unfortunately, they may make you feel like they are comparing stories to compete with others.  They are dealing with their husband leaving and older kids that do understand how long a deployment is, while still sometimes dealing with younger ones as well.  Each phase has its own challenges.  It may also be that they have been at this game long enough, that their kids have grown and basically left and they find themselves alone.  She probably isn’t going to post much online about the deployment and some may not even know when her husband left.  She has been through this enough to not need to make it public and will just mention they are having a bad or off day.  She may offer advice that others don’t want and it is best to just ignore them.  They are only offering wisdom and advice but if you aren’t ready to listen, it won’t matter.

Now that I went on and on about the basic types of wives, maybe you can see where all levels have their challenges.  Rather than berating, bickering, or giving each other a hard time, we should step back and say if you need help support or want to do something lets go.  We shouldn’t give each other such a hard time.  We are here to support one another and that should be everyone’s goal.  As for those young wives, let me give you advice get up, get out, and get back to life.  Life doesn’t stop at home because your soldier is away and I am certain that isn’t what he would want.  The best way to survive a deployment is to spend it with friends and those who understand your struggles.  Army wives unite and stop using the internet in a passive aggressive attack of others.  We are stronger if we all work together.

Apparently, I know everything

Over time I have gotten used to being the answer for every question with my children and any household or money issue for my husband, but lately it seems that I am also the go to for everything related to the Army.  I don't know if this is because his unit just deployed or if it is because there are so many young new wives.  The only thing I do know is that 95% of the questions I am asked could be found on Google, in the same amount or less time than it took to ask me.  It boggles me in the age of information that someone would need to contact me for a phone number or to ask for a website for an organization.  Most of these things, believe it or not, I don't actually know.  Take a guess at where those quick answers are coming from.  If you said Google, you're right.  I have not memorized the phone numbers to every office and organization on post, nor do I know the URL for everyone of their websites or Facebook pages.  I think this is quickly becoming one of my biggest pet peeves.  I love to help people but I keep thinking maybe I can get them to where they can help themselves.  I just haven't figured out how to break it to them nicely, that they should try this new thing called Google first.  I am flattered that everyone thinks I have that much knowledge but I honestly don't think anyone knows all of these things.  It doesn't matter if you have been affiliated with the military for a week or for 30 years, there will always be something new for you to learn.  I urge anyone who is new to take all of the classes you can and even some that have spent several years around the Army.  If you have a question about where to find these classes, do a simple search for ACS and whatever base you might be stationed at.

Suck it up Buttercup

It always amazes me to see wives that whine endlessly about how their lives are falling apart because their husband is gone.  I'm not saying I enjoy having my husband gone for long periods of time, in fact I hate that part of the job, but if there is one main point to my life it is that I know how to take care of myself.  I see civilian wives sad because their husband is away on business for a week and how sad they are.  I urge them to look at it from my side.  My husband’s business takes him away for a week or more on a regular basis for training.  That is nothing.  Any wife that gets upset when there husband is not in harm’s way and gone for less than a month is being a little to codependent for me.  Try having your husband’s job take him from you for 9 months or more and stick him in a country where he is hated, in constant danger of being shot at or having things explode.  His job takes him to an area where a part of the local population wants nothing more than to see him dead.  When your husband is sent on a business trip, where there is a threat of him being killed, then feel free to say something about how hard it is.  Until then, I don't really want to hear about it.  Now for those wives that are military that want to whine and complain that they can't survive without their other half during a deployment, really?  Yes it makes me sad to realize my husband will miss everything for the next year but I know I can survive.  If nothing else, I am resilient and grown up enough to handle things back here and my husband can take comfort knowing he doesn't have to worry about me or the kids.  From the beginning of our life together, I have made sure that I would have the ability to survive while he was gone.  I have even gone through a pregnancy without him there for most of it.  Instead of being dependent on a man, I am independent and can handle paying the bills, getting the care maintained or even repaired, driving around a new place, and anything else that life throws at me.  My husband doesn't handle the finances at all; I bought the furniture on my own, and am even the one who handled the negotiations for our last car.  I doubt he even knows how much he gets paid.  He is actually dependent on me to take care of everything at home, and I know some people think it shouldn't be that way, but it has to be.  His job is too important to be interrupted by worrying if all of those things are taken care of while he is away.  When your husband leaves you for a deployment, everyone has a similar reaction and goes through a grieving process.  The differences come in the way you portray yourself to the world and how much you let it interfere in your life.  Just because a wife holds her head up and doesn't breakdown in public, is not proof that she is uncaring.  Rather, it is proof that she has the strength to pull through and be strong for her family and knows that life will go on.  You can do two things during this time; let grief consume you and becoming a blubbering whiny mess or lift yourself up and start looking forward to the future and act like an adult.  You were old enough to get married and leave mommy and daddy.  Now it is time to suck it up, put on your big girl panties, and deal with this life.  Life goes on while they are gone and I guarantee your husband wants you to continue on and not be sitting behind a computer crying that you can't live without him.  Get off your butt, take a shower, and get out and learn something new or go out to lunch with a friend but most of all quit feeling sorry for yourself.