Kiona Smith-Strickland

Choosing an Online School: Safety Tips for your Education

For service members or military spouses seeking higher education, online programs often sound like the perfect choice. Online classes are portable, so you don’t have to transfer every time you move, and mid-semester PCS or deployment orders are much less likely to wreck your transcript if you can take your...
Read more...
Financial Aid For Military Spouses (Part 2)

Part 1 of this article covered financial aid options which are available to everyone. As military spouses, we face unique challenges in our educational pursuits; fortunately, we also have access to unique resources to help fund our educations, such as Career Advancement Accounts and a number of scholarships specifically for...
Read more...
Putting the Right Spin on Employers’ Assumptions about Military Spouses

Military spouses face some serious challenges in the job market, especially compared to our civilian counterparts. A 2007 study by the RAND Institute found that military spouses consistently had higher unemployment rates, lower wages, and slimmer prospects for advancement than civilian spouses with the same education, experience, and demographic profile....
Read more...
Financial Aid for Military Spouses (Part 1)

Education is the best way to increase your employment opportunities and your earning potential, and for many people, learning is a worthwhile goal in its own right. The bad news is that the cost of higher education is steadily increasing. The good news is that college can be affordable; financial...
Read more...
Veteran’s Guide to Final Arrangements, Part 1: Burial Allowances

Death is a subject most people prefer to avoid, but talking about it can help you ease the strain on your family when the time comes. By discussing your wishes ahead of time, you can avoid leaving your loved ones unsure what you would have wanted, and you can ensure...
Read more...
Relocation, New Friends, and Long Distance Friendships

A host of recent studies have examined the effect of frequent relocation on children and adolescents. Military families relocate significantly more often than civilian families, and service members’ kids are not the only ones affected. Leaving close friends and established support networks, and bidding farewell to friends as they leave for...
Read more...
Three Great Ways to Observe Veterans Day

Veterans Day is a week away. It should be a time for all Americans to reflect on the sacrifices of our service members past and present, but for veterans and their families, the day is especially significant. The holiday falls on a weekend this year, which offers more time than...
Read more...
How to Protect your Family: The Basics of Operational Security

Military families are familiar with worry. We know better than anyone in the world what it feels like to know that someone we love is far away and in danger, and that we are almost completely unable to protect them. Fortunately, there is one thing we can do to protect...
Read more...
Just the Two of Us: Child-Free Couples and Military Culture

I still remember the first Family Readiness Group dinner that I attended after getting engaged to my husband. Most of the women in attendance were either pregnant, shepherding fairly young children, or both, and I barely lasted five minutes before a complete stranger hit me with the apparently inevitable (and...
Read more...
What to Expect When You’re Expecting a Homecoming

The day your service member returns from a deployment is one of the most anticipated events in your relationship and the life of your family. You probably want it to be perfect for your loved one. No matter how much you plan and how great your intentions are, it’s not...
Read more...