1. Free Homecoming Banners
Deployments can be tough, but it’s hard to match the joy of a military homecoming. To help you, your family and friends celebrate, BuildASign.com offers free customizable banners for these occasions.
To get a banner, you only need to pay the cost of shipping and any additional special finishing you choose. There’s no need to enter a coupon code or military ID—but the company does love it when they get photos of the homecoming celebration.
Since BuildASign started this program in 2008, it has donated more than 337,000 homecoming banners to the loved ones of returning service members.
2. Home Improvement Discounts
Military life means relocating more often than the average family. Fixing up a new home can be expensive, but Home Depot and Lowe’s make it easier with military discounts of 10% off.
Lowe’s Everyday 10% Military Discount is available to all veterans and current service members as well as their immediate families. You simply enroll in the program online, and once you’re approved, you can use your discount for both online and in-store purchases. You can’t combine the discount with any other offer or use it for professional purchases.
Home Depot’s discount is for veterans, active duty service members and dependents. It’s not clear whether spouses count as dependents—legally they don’t, but some discount programs include spouses in that category. The safest thing is to bring your service member to sign up, which you’ll need to do in-store.
Home Depot limits the use of its military discount to in-store shopping. That makes it harder to use if you live far from a store. In that case, there’s always Lowe’s!
3. Sprint Perks for Military
Sprint Perks offers 50% off Unlimited plans for qualifying US military families. The discount applies to lines two through six on Unlimited Basic, Unlimited Plus or Unlimited Premium plans.
If you choose Unlimited Premium, you get access to Amazon Prime, Hulu and streaming music service Tidal. You also receive 100 GB of mobile hotspot service, a helpful feature for when you need internet access on the go.
The Perks program is only one way in which Sprint supports military families. If your spouse gets deployed, they can qualify for the Deployed Military Program, which lets them stay on their service plan and keep their phone number for up to three years.
4. Streaming Music with Pandora Premium Military
Sprint isn’t the only company offering premium services at a discount to military spouses. With Pandora Premium Military, you and your family can get ad-free music customized to your tastes.
The program gives you all the benefits of standard Pandora Premium for just $7.99 a month. You can create customized playlists, subscribe to your favorite podcasts and play songs you want to hear on-demand with unlimited skips and offline listening.
Pandora Premium Military is available to service members, dependents and spouses. The service auto-renews as long as you qualify, so you don’t have to worry about signing up more than once.
5. Free Tutoring
Studying for your GED? Getting a degree? Have kids in school? Tutor.com has you covered with free on-demand tutoring and homework help for US Military families.
All tutoring takes place online in secure classrooms, so you can access learning support wherever you are. Qualified and experienced tutors are available to work with students at all levels, from kindergarten through college.
Tutor.com offers support in more than 100 subjects including math, reading, writing and social studies as well as accounting, nursing and computer science. All tutors get screened for subject matter expertise, so you know you’re getting someone who knows the material.
Qualifying family members can access tutoring in one of three ways:
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Request a tutor’s help in real time on Tutor.com or the Tutor.com app
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Schedule a tutoring session for the future
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Upload a draft of an assignment and get comments on it within 24 hours
Personal information is never shared, so you can feel secure using the service for any member of your immediate family.
6. Free LinkedIn for a Year
The only thing certain in military family life is change. Frequent relocations and deployments can make it difficult for military spouses to build stable careers, but LinkedIn is here to help.
This professional networking tool offers a free year-long subscription to its Premium Career service for military spouses who have experienced changes of station, job losses or career changes. It’s not a one-time trial, either—you qualify for the freebie every time you experience one of these events.
With your LinkedIn Premium account, you get access to a LinkedIn Learning Path designed specifically for military spouses. The program features almost 19 hours of content geared to helping you build a flexible and portable career. You can also take advantage of any of LinkedIn’s 12,000 business, creative and technical courses.
7. MedCerts Training with MyCAA Tuition Assistance
The Military Spouse Career Advancement Account, more commonly known as MyCAA, is one of the most valuable programs available to military spouses. It offers up to $4,000 in financial aid, in $2,000 increments per fiscal year, to help you get a certification, license or Associate’s degree in a portable career field.
You can use your MyCAA benefits at MedCerts, which Victory Media rated as the country’s top non-traditional military-spouse-friendly school. MedCerts has 40 available programs of study to help you start a career in healthcare or IT. There’s even a veterinary assistant program available.
All of MedCerts’s programs prepare students to sit for examinations to earn nationally recognized credentials, such as:
Most MedCerts programs prepare you for more than one credentialing exam, so it’s a particularly portable option for military spouses.
With MedCerts and MyCAA, you can be one step closer to a career that’s satisfying, lucrative and adaptable to the needs of a military spouse. Don’t wait—learn more today and start your career journey.
