The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation is again expanding the programming it offers to military spouses.

The chamber has long hosted military spouse focused job fairs around the nation. Now, it is not just helping spouses and potential employers to connect but is also helping spouses and veterans preparing for a changing job market and prepare to become leaders in their community.

Check out the fantastic offerings below and be sure to go online and register. For a full list of programs for the rest of 2018, visit https://www.uschamberfoundation.org/events/upcoming

Age of Agility Summit

Aug. 9, Chicago, Il.

Register online at: https://www.uschamberfoundation.org/event/age-agility-summit-illinois

Aug. 23, Memphis, Tenn.

Register online at: https://www.uschamberfoundation.org/event/age-agility-summit-tennessee

We are living in a time of extreme and rapid innovation in technology, causing radical shifts in the workforce and, consequently, drastic changes are needed in how we educate students. Technologists, futurists, and business leaders alike are referring to this fundamental shift as the next Industrial Revolution. We call it the Age of Agility, and we are calling for changes in education that match the forces of change in the economy.

Please join Empower Illinois and America Succeeds for the Age of Agility Summit Illinois on Thursday, August 9. This event will present insights and perspectives from business, education, and policy leaders on what the Future of Work means for restructuring the way we deliver education – helping us crowdsource strategies and solutions to take action within our state and across the country.

Children only get one chance at a quality education. We must do everything we can to ensure that they get the education they need and deserve to succeed in the future.

Minneapolis Community Engagement Event-A Call to Lead: Creating Lasting Impact through Innovative Solutions

Aug. 27, Minneapolis, Minn.

As a leading veteran-friendly city, Minneapolis provides the perfect backdrop to host an engaging discussion focused on public-private partnerships and community engagement around military family support—especially from the employment and career support angles. To that end, on August 27th, 2018, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation’s Hiring Our Heroes in partnership with Comcast NBCUniversal will host “A Call to Lead: Creating Lasting Impact through Innovative Solutions".

This half-day event intends to highlight Minneapolis's military community and support, provide best practices for businesses to engage the military community and move from veteran friendly to veteran ready, and highlight pathways to career fields identified as promising options for veterans.

Register online at: https://www.uschamberfoundation.org/event/minneapolis-community-engagement-event-call-lead-creating-lasting-impact-through-innovative

WOMEN IN SPORTS.
WOMEN IN LEADERSHIP

Sept. 17, Washington D.C.

The second annual SPORTS FORWARD summit will explore the future of women in sports.

Join us as we hear from athletes, business leaders, and champions of equality who will discuss the value of sports in preparing women for leadership roles. 

Speakers will address societal attitudes about women in sports and ideas and solutions to boost participation, access, and fan engagement.

Speakers include: 

• Abby Wambach, Soccer Champion, Olympic Gold Medalist, World Cup Champion, American Soccer Icon
• Brenda Andress, Commissioner, Canadian Women’s National Hockey League; and Founder and President, SheIS
• Caiti Donovan, Co-Founder and Executive Director, SheIS
• Dan Black, Global Recruiting Leader, EY
• Heather Garozzo, Director of Fan Engagement, Team Dignitas
• Joanna Lohman, American Professional Soccer Player, Washington Spirit in the National Women's Soccer League
• Katie Warner Johnson, Co-Founder and CEO, Carbon38
• Sasha DiGiulian, Professional Rock Climber

Register online at: https://www.uschamberfoundation.org/event/sports-forward-0

My teenage son has spent nearly seven months desperately looking for a job.

As a straight-A student, active Boy Scout and community volunteer he has a resume that is as good as any teen. He is 15, soon to turn 16, but figured that wouldn’t be an issue. Most hourly jobs that require little experience could use able, willing workers. Right?

Turns out, maybe not.

Teenage employment, especially teens who work summer jobs, is declining.

Most moms and dads, especially those in their 30s and above remember spending summer after summer hustling to and from their very first job in fast food or at the mall. Today only a third of teens take on summer jobs.

I vividly remember scoring a job at Sea World, selling cups of dead fish to visitors to throw to the sea lions. It was hot, oh so hot. It smelled. Bad. I had to wear a terrible, itchy, polyester uniform in which I recited a silent mantra under my breath, “please don’t let the cute boy from history class visit the sea lions.” 

I learned lessons that summer. First, you don’t make a lot of money working eight hours a day at minimum wage, which at that point meant about $6 an hour. Second, most of that money disappeared into taxes. Third, the rest went into my parents’ gas tank.

Sigh.

But still, I had a job, and it gave me experience that led me to better jobs in an office and retail. I never did manage to nab a position at the movie theater, however, the holy grail of all teenage jobs in our small town.  

Today, my son couldn’t find work doing anything, even typical teen jobs such as bagging groceries and washing cars. Part of the reason, business has changed.

He was told more than once that the minimum hiring age is 18, even though our state law says work can begin at 15 with limited hours.

Also, NPR reported that teens simply do not have the skills that employers want. A recent story by NPR said 46 percent of U.S. employers said they are struggling to find applicants with the skills they need.

It is doubtful teenagers will ever be able to fill that gap.

NPR also reports that the shift away from teenage summer jobs came during the recent recession when so many adults lost jobs they began taking any job they could find, including selling fish to tourists at Sea World. Teens were squeezed out of the market so adults could make ends meet. During the height of the recession teen unemployment hit a record 27 percent.

I told my son to not worry about it: to take the unpaid internship he was offered, to enjoy, to guiltlessly go to summer camp. He had four short years in which to spend his summers as a carefree kid and some day he would look back on them and smile.  

Turns out the NPR report says as a mom, I’m not far off track. Across the nation guidance counselors are urging teens to spend their summers preparing for the future, not working eight hour shifts.

Colleges now offer summer camps to high schoolers, unpaid internships are available in hospitals, labs, newspapers, virtually in any field you can imagine. Those experiences are worth far more than a minimum wage job.

So, if your teen is wearing out his shoe leather on the mean streets of unemployment, urge them to relax and focus instead on experiences that will guide them to their future careers, not a current, crummy small paycheck. They will be richer for it in the long run.

Have you shopped outside the gate lately? Did you feel a slight sticker shock at the price of even the simplest of items?

That’s because prices are rising and it could be bad news for all of us.

CNN reported that the Consumer Price Index, which tracks the cost of common shopping list items, rose 2.9 percent in June, the biggest jump since 2012. Paychecks, however, have not increased at the same rate. The report also says average hourly earnings only increased 2.7 percent. If you fall in this category, it means you can’t buy more, you are just paying more for what you already buy.

In the same time period, sales at commissaries have fallen 21.3 percent since 2012.

Read that again, the military commissary, which military families have routinely named as the second most valued benefit after health care, is not being used as much by military families.

And as far as the calculator pushers at the federal government are concerned, use it, or lose it.

While both the Department of Defense and Congress don’t want to do away with the commissary, they do want it to cost less, according to Military.com.

The DOD wants to lower the amount of money it gives for commissary operations from $1.4 billion in 2017 to $400 million by 2021. The only way to do that? Generate more sales.

That won’t happen if more of us are headed out the front gate to do our shopping. Experts say the commissary is also competing with meal order services. And there is the long-standing argument of just how much you save shopping at the commissary vs big box chains such as Walmart.

We would argue the value is enough for all of us to make shopping at the commissary a priority.

Military life is inconsistent. Changes are constant. Move is inevitable. One constant: the commissary. You can rely on the commissary to keep prices constant and affordable, even when you move to a duty station like Hawaii where staples like milk can cost $6 – 8 a gallon in a civilian store.

You also rely on those constant low prices when you leave your job in the next PCS move and your family drops to a one-income household for what could be months. Few other stores outside the gate can help you stretch your dollar as far as the commissary.

The bottom line: shop at your commissary. We guarantee you will miss it when it’s gone.

Joining the Army National Guard? As of Aug. 5 new recruits will not have to serve a full year before using the tuition assistance program.

Currently Guard members must serve one year before receiving assistance with undergraduate degree programs and 10 years for master’s degrees.  Next month new Guard members can use the tuition assistance as soon as they complete the Advanced Individual Training (AIT) course.

Enlisted soldiers working towards a master’s degree must finish the Advanced Leaders Course (ALC) and officers must complete the Captains Career Course before using tuition assistance.

Military members can receive 100 percent of their tuition covered up to $250 an hour and up to 16 semester hours each year. Individual states may have additional programs to cover education costs for National Guard members who reside in that state.

For more information about National Guard Tuition Assistance, visit www.military.com/education/money-for-school/national-guard-tuition-assistance.html

The official injured count from Iraq and Afghanistan is 32,226. That number accounts only for injuries sustained on the battlefield. It does account for the thousands more who are suffering from injuries sustained during battle but not considered serious enough to send home from war. Some estimates put that number as high as 900,000 service members.

In turn, that means there are a lot of spouses who are taking time away from their own jobs to shuttle their injured service member to appointments and surgeries.

While a service member still on active duty will not see a dip in pay during treatment, the federal requirements are no friend to their civilian spouses.

Currently there is no legal federal requirement for employers to provide paid sick leave. Companies subject to the Family and Medical Leave Act, those that employ 50 or more employees, are entitled to job-protected time off under that program, but, it is still unpaid.

The law allows for

• Twelve workweeks of leave in a 12-month period for:
  • the birth of a child and to care for the newborn child within one year of birth;
  • the placement with the employee of a child for adoption or foster care and to care for the newly placed child within one year of placement;
  • to care for the employee’s spouse, child, or parent who has a serious health condition;
  • a serious health condition that makes the employee unable to perform the essential functions of his or her job;
  • any qualifying emergency arising out of the fact that the employee’s spouse, son, daughter, or parent is a covered military member on “covered active duty”

Also the FMLA specifically addresses military caregiver leave. It allows for 26 work weeks of leave during a single, 12-month period to care for a covered service member with a serious injury or illness if the eligible employee is the service member’s spouse, son, daughter, parent, or next of kin.

Again, this is unpaid leave. However, it dictates that your job is protected while you are gone and that you continue to receive health insurance benefits.

Many employers may require that you take any accumulated vacation days before your FMLA time begins.

Also, under the rule the employee must have been employed with the company for 12 months and worked at least 1,250 hours during those 12 months.

The most important part of FMLA? Talk to your HR department. Keep them updated, ask questions. Make sure you understand all the rules and fill out the correct paperwork.

Confused by how much financial aid you are actually receiving? Not sure exactly how much you owe your college?

You’re not alone.

NewAmerica and uAspire, a nonprofit group that advises students on the financial aid process, has released a report saying that many colleges use language and missing information to paint an incomplete picture of how much students actually owe.

In the study, called “Decoding the Cost of College,” the group gathered financial aid award letters from 900 schools and 36 percent of those never showed a total amount due.  In a summary of the report, the group said “award letters lack consistency and transparency.”

The study did not indicate which 900 schools were chosen for the study.

The group listed these key findings:

• Confusing Jargon and Terminology: Of the 455 colleges that offered an unsubsidized student loan, we found 136 unique terms for that loan, including 24 that did not include the word “loan.”
• Omission of the Complete Cost: Of our 515 letters, more than one-third did not include any cost information with which to contextualize the financial aid offered.
• Failure to Differentiate Types of Aid: Seventy percent of letters grouped all aid together and provided no definitions to indicate to students how grants and scholarships, loans, and work-study all differ.
• Misleading Packaging of Parent PLUS Loans: Nearly 15 percent of letters included a PLUS loan as an “award,” making the financial aid package appear far more generous than it really was.
• Vague Definitions and Poor Placement of Work-Study: Of institutions that offered work-study, 70 percent provided no explanation of work-study and how it differs from other types of aid.
• Inconsistent Bottom Line Calculations: In our sample, only 40 percent calculated what students would need to pay, and those 194 institutions had 23 different ways of calculating remaining costs.
• No Clear Next Steps: Only about half of letters provided information about what to do to accept or decline awards, and those that did had inconsistent policies.

Bottom line, if you don’t understand your financial aid award letter, ask questions, early in the process.

To learn more about the study and read the entire document, visit https://www.newamerica.org/education-policy/policy-papers/decoding-cost-college/

By Amy Nielsen

This week I am participating in two vastly different symposiums that neatly bracket my scope of practice. I am an integrative nutritionist, herbalist, and chef.

On Saturday I went to a day-long intensive class learning about the varied uses of one herb given by a visiting herbalist who is an expert in that plant. It was held at a world renowned herbalist’s school. On Wednesday, I will attend an end-of-the-year symposium discussing diverse research on the broader topic of metabolism given at Harvard honoring the graduating doctoral students in the program.

Integrative medicine is the bridge that links Western compartmentalized medicine with the whole person biopsychosocial framework held by traditional systems of healing. Integration of the delicate balance of the healing presence associated with many CAM modalities into the rigors of a double blind controlled clinical study is exactly what we need to learn to do.

So much of what is becoming understood about how molecular structures change is leading the drive to understand how we become us. We become us by what we ingest. However, there is arguably a lot more to healing than electron transport train function or cholesterol ratios.

But this is a lot of specific, technical speak that is pointedly of interest to those in my field and few others. The point here is that students of science are tasked with not only keeping up with the latest and greatest innovations but also finding ways to integrate lessons of the past.

Students learning to be integrative practitioners need to learn to be a walking thesaurus of sorts.

One of the dangers of integrating the old and new into the same research platforms is the distinct probability that the outcomes of the research will inevitably go to the highest bidder. It is the job of the student and practitioner, in my opinion, to give equal weight to scientific breakthroughs and the art of traditional medicine.

My current classes are both discussing how to write evidence based papers on integrative topics. That means big ole research papers supported with cited references. This first half of the term is dedicated to searching only biomedical databases of peer reviewed published data.

That is, understanding what criteria make up good research will come in handy when we move on to the next part, finding supporting data within the traditional modalities where there are no nicely indexed databases to search. Learning to distinguish good research from bad makes evaluating research in more obscure and unindexed realms more reliable.

On the flip side, learning how to design a study that truly takes into account both the compartmental needs of the gold standard clinical trial and the need for individualization of treatment present in many of the systems being studied will prove difficult. Herein the choice of cohort and treatment center will need to be carefully examined to ensure the least number of variables introduced into the study. Intraprofessional bias may be a hurdle to jump as well.

The ability to couple both kinds of research leads to well-rounded and supported changes in treatment that can find a place in both a biomedical practice and a traditional practice. Working in new and traditional research helps more patients in the long run, which is after all the whole purpose of doing research in the first place.

Spending concentrated time in both worlds keeps the flexibility of language moving, allows me to become a better practitioner and researcher.

As we move forward in the light speed realm of medical research, it behooves us to remember that not all gold standard trials result in the best treatment for every patient, nor does every ancient technique stand alone without support for the surrounding system.

Integrating the two takes the ability to speak several profession-specific languages while holding deep respect and compassion for the usefulness and necessity of all to heal the ailments of our collective patient base.

How long is sufficient to retain a quality job?

Army leadership is asking that question now and assuring senators that they are working to help military spouses find employment.

This week Military.com reported that top Army leaders spoke with lawmakers about helping spouses find meaningful work and that longer assignments to duty stations could be a way to make that happen.

Senators told those leaders that currently it takes 140 days for the Army to hire spouses or civilians for on-base jobs, a result of a “clunky and inefficient” vetting process in the Office of Personnel Management.

Earlier this month President Donald Trump issued an executive order encouraging federal agencies to speed the hiring of military spouses. Still, lawmakers say a lack of stabilization in one location, as well as a lack of on-base jobs, are the biggest hurdles.

To read the full report by Military.com, please visit, https://www.military.com/daily-news/2018/05/15/army-mulls-longer-assignments-encourage-employers-hire-spouses.html

Military spouses know employers are getting their money’s worth when they hire a spouse, but now the federal government may actually give employers a tax credit for giving spouses a job.

Senators Tim Kaine (D-VA), Jon Tester (D-MT) and John Boozman (R-AR), are expected to introduce the Jobs and Childcare for Military Families Act of 2018 next week. A key component of the bill would give businesses a tax credit for hiring military spouses, reports Military.com.

Currently employers can receive up to a $9,600 tax credit for hiring veterans. The amount is calculated based on the number of hours the veteran worked and the veteran’s disability rating from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Military.com reports that the spouse credit would work in a similar fashion.

“The Jobs and Childcare for Military Families Act encourages businesses to step up and play a bigger role in hiring military spouses who already sacrifice so much,” Kaine said in a press release. “And it further addresses a real obstacle to professional success for many military families: access to quality, affordable child care. Addressing these issues will help military spouses advance in their careers despite frequent moves.”

Another component of the bill would give a pre-tax savings account to military families for child care expenses. The system is already used by many employers to help workers save pre-tax pay for child care costs by deducting money from the employee’s paycheck and placing it in a special account. Employees are reimbursed when they submit receipts for child care.

Beware pay periods bearing gifts.

Occasionally, actually more than a lot, the gurus at the Defense Finance and Accounting Services, the guys who pay military members each month, make a mistake.

And those mistakes can land an extra $20 or even $200 in your paycheck.

What’s the best advice I’ve ever heard as a military spouse? Don’t touch this extra money. Ever. Don’t spend it. Don’t assume it’s yours. Don’t assume it is back pay from something your service member did way back when.

Because, if you are wrong, Uncle Sam is going to take it back. They won’t give you a payment plan. They won’t let you choose the date to give it back. They will take it.

And if you’ve accidentally borrowed several hundred, or several thousand dollars from DFAS, that repayment is going to hurt.

In 2009 members of Congress introduced a bill that would limit the repayments of accidental overpayment.

H.R. 2771 read: “To amend titles 10 and 37, United States Code, to provide a more equitable process by which the military departments may recover overpayments of military pay and allowances erroneously paid to a member of the Armed Forces when the overpayment is due to no fault of the member, to expand Department discretion regarding remission or cancellation of indebtedness, and for other purposes.”

Language in the bill limited repayment to 10 percent of a military member’s pay, allowed for the debt to be erased if the military member was now a veteran who was living off of disability payments and put in place a 5-year limitation on collections.

The bill died in committee and never made it to a full vote of Congress.

Which means, if the military overpaid you by no fault of your own, and you didn’t notice or thought that you were due the money, they eventually will come for you.

Case in point, a friend of mine’s husband retired in 2012. They are now living off his VA disability check since his injuries in Iraq left him with a 90 percent VA rating.  In January of this year they received notice that in 2004 the military had overpaid them a monthly allotment. That allotment, over time and which they didn’t realize they were not due, amounted to over $6,000.

And, the military was writing to let them know they’d be taking their money back. Now.

They were on notice that his monthly VA check would be withheld, in full, until the debt was repaid.

It was 14 years later, a debt that took two years to amass, which they didn’t even realize they had, the DOD wanted paid in full, immediately.

My friends are scrambling to get the DOD to agree to a payment plan and find a way to buy groceries and pay rent during the next year when the DOD takes every cent they live off of.

We can talk at length about how despicable this treatment is. How the DOD should be better at fixing their mistakes and more lenient when correcting mistakes they make.

But frankly, that conversation ended when the bill to protect military members against DOD errors died in Congress. No one is interested in making sure service members do not lose their homes or go hungry because of a DOD accounting mistake.

So the best thing you can do as a military family to protect against this? Be vigilant. Check your service members’ pay every single pay period. If there is extra money, find out way. Be persistent.

Take notes when you speak to DFAS. Keep email trails. Be prepared to prove what you were told.  

If there is extra pay you can’t account for, sock it away. Make sure it is ready and waiting when Uncle Sam breaks down your door to take it. Because, he absolutely will.