One of the challenges with any military Permanent Change of Station (PCS) move is that you likely won’t ever see your new home until you actually arrive with your stuff already packed away. The Pentagon doesn’t pay for house-hunting trips or new duty station fact-finding missions.
In this episode, Army spouse Kellie Artis shares her best tips and tricks for understanding your future home and dealing with all of the things you need to know about it without actually being there. Artis is the chief operations officer of Millie, a company that helps military members move by connecting them with resources and local insight on their upcoming location.
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The following is an edited transcript of this episode of PCS with Military.com.
Amy Bushatz 0:00
If you're anything like me, the second those military move orders, or even the rumor of military move orders hits your radar, you're researching the heck out of your next duty station. Where should you live? What schools should your kids attend? Where is the nearest Target? And is it or is it not a Super Target? In short, only the important stuff. But of course, you're also doing this from afar. On the one hand, nothing is better than the feeling of knowing you've got housing all locked and loaded before you even watch the movers pack the van. On the other hand, putting together your new life from a distance is basically a trust fall. How would you really know what you want if you've never spent significant or often any time there? Today's PCS with Military.com guest is a top expert on dealing with your new duty station while still at your old one. Kellie Artis is an Army spouse and part of the brains behind Millie, a wealth of information and help for duty stations nationwide, and a real life army of military spouses from all branches whose only job is to be your eyes and ears on the ground at your upcoming duty station home. Today, Kellie is going to give us her best intel on setting up your new home from afar. Kellie, welcome to PCS with Military.com.
Kellie Artis 1:53
Hey, Amy, thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.
AB 1:57
I'm so excited to talk to you today. I just love what you guys do. So this is going to be fantastic. Start by telling us how many times you have personally moved with the military or otherwise.
KA 2:10
Okay, so you threw me off on this question because I usually say seven, which is our number of official PCSes and we did most of those in, like, three years, a three year time span, which is kind of crazy. But I counted back with my non-military moves. And I was really restless in college. So I get to add eight more moves. I know I have problems with people. I just don't like living with people. It's hard y'all. So um, yeah, I moved a couple of times when I was a kid and then like almost every eight months in college.
AB 2:44
Okay, but were you at the same college or ..?
KA 2:49
Yeah. Oh my God. Like filling up your laundry basket kind of move like not like, not you hauls in big moving trucks and stuff. It was like take eight trips and get it done. So oh, my gosh.
AB 3:00
I'm liking it. That is so, that is so real. Oh, the days when all of our household goods. Well, first that we didn't even know the words "household goods." Like what we own could not be called household goods, those days.
KA 3:13
Great, right? Wardrobe, a toaster and my Margarita glasses probably.
AB 3:19
That's right, who needs clothes? It's fine. All right. So it does not take a rocket scientist to see why dealing with your new duty station from your old one is not the best, right? But I'm sure you've seen some pretty dramatic examples of times this has been a huge problem. Can you give us a couple?
KA 3:37
Oh my word. Yeah, I can give you a ton. And we hear this a lot from folks that kind of stumble upon us out of a need. But yeah, often it's just the inability to go to the actual location ahead of time. So, you know, obviously, it's ideal to like, we call it recon, we're gonna wait, we're gonna gobble up all the jargon, y'all because it's just fun. So you know, oftentimes you want to go like recon your new duty station, check out the neighborhoods, you know, actually look at the house. I don't know before you sign a lease, but often, that's a luxury that we just don't have available to us, especially this past year with travel restrictions and the pandemic. I mean, it just has been crazy. So we have heard so many crazy stories usually has to do with the home being misrepresented, right? Or just not getting the whole picture. Usually you see what someone who is advertising their home wants you to see. And that's not their fault. I mean, they're trying they have an incentive to get the house rented or sold. Usually, we deal with more mishaps on the rental side because you don't necessarily have an advocate working for you like an agent. So yeah, we've heard of things like a family that has you know, a child with a severe cat allergy walking in and being like bowled over by cat pee smell right as soon as they open the door. Or maybe there's like a power line transformer big, huge gnarly thing in the backyard that probably admits not amazing things for your brain. Like, didn't make the listing photo, right? We've heard of like cemeteries, we've heard of some more, you know, dramatic things and more concerning things like mold infestations in homes, safety concerns with like railings and whatnot. And even farther down the line of scary and sad are the actual scams that exist. And those actually do happen where somebody will list a home that doesn't actually even exist. So they kind of prey on people, some people prey on the fact that we're under this really compressed timeline. They know we're not there, right? We're not in the actual location, can't even drive by it, to see if it's real. And we're kind of stressed out when we're doing it. So yeah, those are just some of the things that we see.
AB 5:46
And nothing adds to your -- two things you just said, I want to go back to first of all, nothing adds to your stress, like coming to your new home and finding what is actually a cemetery?
KA 5:57
Oh, well, it's mainly that it was near, it was adjacent. So like, you know, this actually happened to me as a kid, but then I had heard this story again, recently, apparently, my family moved to a home when I was like two years old. And then realize that there was a cemetery like kind of in the backyard like and I had a cousin that lived with us at that time, who was old enough to be really freaked out by it. So we ended up not living in that house for very long. But yeah, it I mean, it happens like we've heard you know, heard of people like moving in across the street and there's a penitentiary, you know, like, unless you know the area you have no idea what's outside of that little frame on the the window, you know, or the the photo gallery in your browser. Like you really have no clue you can try Google Streets, you know, sometimes that can lend a little bit of perspective. We encourage people to do that. But yeah, sometimes we're just a little bit too trusting.
AB 6:54
And then the second thing you said, you mentioned people being scammed. I have a friend at Fort Campbell, who opened her door one day to find her new renters for the house that she was not renting and had not listed.
KA 7:07
Oh crap. So they just kept up at her address. Yeah. So yeah, sometimes it could actually be an actual house that somebody has like grab pick because think about it. If you've ever listed your house online. I think there are probably photos of my house on Zillow somewhere from yeah, forever ago, you could just grab them and yeah, it happened.
AB 7:23
Yes, she was an Army spouse. And they were an Army family. And she's like, I am so sorry, but I do not have your money. I don't have your money. And I live here like I can't, there's nothing I can do about this.
KA 7:41
Sadly, in those situations, a lot of times, you're kind of just out of luck. The installations provide housing. Usually there's some sort of inventory. Sometimes there's not, sometimes there's a like crazy waitlist, you know, and it, it varies so drastic or drastically from base to base. But for the most part, I think the military kind of just assumes that you're, they've given you a valid option. Yeah, outside of that valid option, you're kind of on your own. And though it is buyer beware.
AB 8:10
These guys literally were in her driveway with a U-Haul. I mean, it could not have been more like a dramatic situation. Terrible for everyone and she felt so bad, you know, but my goodness, what do you, what do you even do? You know, but then -- Okay, so then the other thing I thought is like, so we had the ability to go on a house hunting trip, when we moved from Fort Benning to Fort Campbell. It's about an eight hour drive. So totally doable, right. Like for the peace of mind. So we go out there, we find a place to live, we see it with our eyeballs, you know, like we've not just online, we noticed that there is in fact the transformer you mentioned. And we're like, that's fine. We're like yeah, free medical care, whatever. Yeah. And, you know, all good. Okay, so fast forward to actually moving there. We realized like this is not the neighborhood for us, you know, like we lived there for not even a year we did not like the neighborhood we did not like where we ended up living we did not like the area you know, it's just like it wasn't great. That part of Campbell is surrounded by a lot of farm areas that used to have trees and don't anymore, and so there can be a lot of wind there, and the wind would just come off of these fields. And that house would just shake, you know, hated that. And just things like that, like things you wouldn't know unless you had actually lived there. I think that's another thing right? Like even doing a house hunting trip did not solve my I did this from a distance problem because I you know, maybe the house was better than something I would have signed for had I not been there. But at the same time, like there's all this like intel, that once I lived there. I was like we're moving down the highway.
KA 9:59
And you know, it often takes like that experience before you know these things. I mean, in California, there's this tax called Mello-Roos. And it affects all kinds of things. I want to say like Arizona, people get these things called swamp coolers to heat or cool. I forget what? It's been a minute since I've done all this research. But there are all these little quirky things that you don't know until you realize you missed it, right? And then you're like, oh, I should, you don't even know to ask that question. Why would you? Or it does help to have that sort of insight, and have people that you can either ask, or you can look up online and say, like, Hey, what do you what do you wish you had known? Like, what was your? What was your thing? What was your thinking about the wind coming off and shaking the house? What was that moment for you at this duty station? People will tell you because they know.
AB 10:49
Yeah. So it brings us to what my next question, which is: how do folks solve this issue? Like what have you seen?
KA 10:55
I mean, a lot of times, it's relying on your networks, right? It's asking the folks like, so if I knew that, you know, you had been at Fort Campbell. It's a Hey, Amy, what was your experience like moving to Campbell? What neighborhood did you pick? Why? Why did you pick where you picked? Okay, let me let me back up a little bit. So I did this for Millie. We actually ran focus groups and the questions that we asked folks have questions of folks that were currently living at each of the duty stations. Hey, Okay, first of all, tell me everything. Right. Tell me like you mentioned in the intro, like where is it target is it Walmart, is it dollar store, right, those that matters? You know, how close are things? How close is the base, really not based on what the websites say? Right? Okay, because they all lie, y'all everybody lies about commutes. Everybody lies about commute time.
AB 11:50
And the difference between I live 10 minutes from Fort Campbell and at Fort Campbell. And I like I live 10 minutes from base at Fort Campbell and I live 10 minutes from base and Tampa are two entirely different things.
KA 12:03
Is it by the crow flies? Or is it what sort of base are we talking -- I'm at Fort Bragg. This base is gigantic end to end. So depending on which county you choose to live in, you know, it could really drastically matter and based on which you know, unit specifically your spouse or service member is serving at really it does impact over time. And you know, even though you think like a 30 minute commute would be fine, because you really love this house. And the photos are just so amazing. Actually, what is the impact of that on your life? You know what I'm saying? Like you're your family, have you accurately assessed your family.
AB 12:39
And here at fort, I'm at Joint Base Elmendorf. And in Alaska, here at JBER, your 40 minute commute becomes an hour and a half if someone hits a moose.
KA 12:51
Those are things you need to know and then what kind of vehicle and tires. Do you need that, you know, vehicle as it does the weather because of the snow? So yeah, so those were all the kind of questions that we tried to end. You don't have to do a little bit of prodding, because if you think about it, once you've lived in a place for a minute, you do get used to the thing, and you don't recognize it as an issue anymore. Or you forget you come, you become normalized to it, you acclimate to it, whatever the case, and for incoming folks that are brand new, you always have to like remember back, what were the things you complained about? What were the pain points for you? What were the adjustment? Issues? Like what were the things that hung you up that you wish you had known? And had you known them? What would you have done differently? So those are all the kind of questions we asked and we always got a totally different answer depending on which duty station it was. Which makes our lives super fun because there's no way of like, there's no standard you know, like there's no knowing anything. The one cool thing that I will say from researching all of these duty stations in bulk was kind of that there was sort of a template though, like you know what I mean? There's always kind of like certain areas that you kind of know you just don't know what they're called yet because you don't know the area yet. You know, some duty stations call like areas we differentiate areas in different ways. Sometimes it's neighborhood sometimes it's cities. Sometimes it exits off the highway, right like some in Fort Campbell. They they go by exit six and 10 and I'm like no, what's the city called? Because I don't see exit six on a map. You know what I'm saying? Like you can go in the Facebook groups and you hear people chatter you know about these different areas. How are you supposed to know what that even means? If you've never been there and you've never driven down that road and you don't know what the different exits.
AB 14:34
So it means don't live in Oak Grove just okay. However, there are people who really liked Oak Grove and I know it guys like, let's level set you do you but I didn't like over here.
KA 14:50
So another really key point that I want to point out especially about the content that we offer is that we did try to be cognizant of every price point. Every lifestyle, we actually are really objective in our information. So even though I would get on the focus group calls, and a lot of times I get people like Amy. I would still try to dig and set like, figure out, okay, so if I am, if Oak Grove makes the most sense for me, and for my family or for my budget, okay, cool. But then tell me about that area, like, let's dig a little bit deeper. If I need to live in that area, or at that, you know, in that neighborhood that's really close to base because of the needs. We've already assessed in our family, we need super short commute, we need to be close to a medical facility, like different things like that. And we end up kind of landing in an area that maybe not maybe not super popular with the military crowd. Okay, cool. But how am I going to make the most out of that area? Because there are always pockets and gems and oh, yeah, really cool things to discover. So we did try to dig pretty, pretty deeply and be fair to all of our sweet little military areas, they all have their own unique flair. And there's something for everybody.
AB 16:10
One of the things that you have been talking about, it's kind of having this inside scoop. And, of course really helps solve a problem with that by having an inside scoop for hire, if you will. Where did this idea even come from?
KA 16:25
Yeah, so it started from a need, right? It's always like, okay, so I don't know how many times you do this, I do this a lot. I get online, I'm looking for something, I can't find it. I'm like, there should be a solution to this problem that I'm dealing with right in this moment. So it's kind of funny, I found Millie after it had barely become a company. Like they were just brand new to the scene. And I found Millie, because I was having issues with a rental property that I was self managing from a few states away. And it was so irritated, because I had just fired my property manager and was gonna have to drive five hours to go let a painter into this house, because it was vacant. I was so annoyed. I'm like, yeah, I can ask my friends to do it. I don't want to burden my friends, you know, whatever. Anyway, come across Millie. And, like, I'm so glad this is the thing. So backing up, Millie came about because it was founded by two veterans. And one of those veterans Ken Robbins, our CEO, is married to an awesome real estate agent. And she found herself having to, every time she PCS like restarting her entire business, right, like so here, we kind of always try to tackle a couple of problems. So we've always been super focused on PCS, and obviously, in alleviating that stress, making sure that people connect with verified folks and like trusted professionals and people who have actually PCS, right, not people who are just interested in like, you know, selling to the military. Right. So I always wanted to make sure that there were like, folks that were relatable and authentic, and, you know, top quality professionals that we could provide to our our military families. But then also, we're very cognizant of the military spouse unemployment problem. So a lot of what we do, I mean, we don't, we don't hire a ton of people, and most of our you know, help is is contracted. But we're still really adamant that anything anyone ever does for us, they're compensated for it. There's no volunteering, were just completely adamant about that. So what happened was, you know, here's this amazing military spouse, real estate agent, who, you know, had to change locations, change duty stations up to like the Northern Virginia area. And they kind of put her down at the bottom of the brokerage thinking, well, you can't be a good agent, because you just got here, you have to learn the area. She's like, not true. So what she did was just focused on military clientele. She's like, I know all the questions people have. And I can tell them all the answers, and I've done this a million times. I'm amazing at PCSing. And so anyway, she ended up climbing really quickly up the ranks through her brokerage, just focusing on military, home sales, because people sought her out, she became like a trusted professional. And you'll see this across the country folks seek out, you know, the veteran, the military spouse, agent, because there's a shortcut. There's vernacular, we don't have to catch people up. We don't have to explain why we're on this timeframe. You know, like, What do you mean, you can't come see the house before you buy it? We don't have to do that.
AB 19:22
Right. And it's like what you're talking about with having people you can turn to, you know, just through the Facebook hivemind. Right, like, they knew that we all speak the same language and that you know, that when I say what's the commute?
KA 19:48
So what what happened then was these two vets launched Agent Hero, which is a real estate agent referral network and all of our agents are exclusively veterans and military spouses. We love civilian agents, we think they're amazing. We try to help them with resources to be better agents for military families. But our network is exclusive to those who have PCS. And they also have to meet tons of really pretty strenuous metrics to make sure that they're not like hobby agents, you know, because we want to make sure that if we hand a military family to one of our agents, they will take extremely good care of them, right, because we don't have time, we don't have time to fire agents and find new ones because we're unhappy or they're there fell off the radar, or they went on vacation and didn't tell us right, like, so. Agent heroes started as this network of trusted professionals. And then we decided really quickly that we also needed to wrap those professionals in a ton of information and resources. So we built Millie, which became sort of the umbrella brand, and houses all of the content and resources, we have information for over 85% of the active duty population. So all of the bases that are stateside, that you will potentially be moving to we probably have covered for you on the base or on the website. So you can go research it for free. No gates, no emails, nothing, just go on, find your base, learn as much as you can. From there, we then have another network of providers called Millie Scouts. And these folks are our military spouses. They're all independent contractors are basically available for like gig work. So you know, we say TaskRabbit, kind of, they can actually be your eyes and ears on the ground. So you do hire them, they do charge for their services, and rightly so I mean, I think that all of our time is valuable, and they should be should be compensated for their for their time and talents. And I guarantee you, they'll go above and beyond, you know, so we set some rates, but usually they'll give you you know, because you know how it goes right. So I fussed at them all the time. I'm like, price your services better. But they're also living the life, you know, they're cognizant of financial constraints as well. So, so yes, you can hire them to go do a FaceTime tour, and make sure that you know, the house is as represented on the listing, right, they've actually this year have been really busy with HHG support. Household goods. We've had a lot of folks reaching out to us saying that they needed help with their move, because they were having a PCS separately from their service member. It was probably one of the top concerns we saw this year because of the pandemic and because of all the things but yeah, there were there were families that were having to you know, either the spouse went ahead or the servicemember went ahead. Either way, somebody was stuck by themselves with, you know, a team of movers or in a couple of toddlers, you know, we had a few pregnant spouses who were trying to do this solo with kids running around, it was crazy. And y'all know if you've done this, I think it's a three adult job to monitor and be present, while the move is actually happening. Because it is just chaos. And I think if we had three adults, for every agent, she'd like supervise, we'd probably not have as many issues with, you know, claims and whatnot, but we don't have that. So what we've been doing is helping supplement some of that just project management sort of stuff. And like, Hey, can you run and pick up the subs from Publix? For lunch, right? Even little things like that are checking off inventory. They're available just to kind of be like an assistant. So yeah, we've had some pretty creative requests. And for the most part, the scouts are able to accommodate. They're not like heavy lifters or they're not going to put your furniture together. But they're there's so much that they can do for you to include walking into a home and telling you. Yeah, it smells like happy. Right? Yeah.
AB 23:39
Okay, so what are three things spouses and service members can do before official orders come up to deal with their new duty duty station while still at the old one?
KA 23:50
Yeah, so the number one thing I think, is research. And that could be because I'm kind of a research nerd. Maybe not everyone gets as excited about this as I do. But the first thing that I would say do, even if you've got like a shortlist of two or three places, go ahead and start, like getting immersed in the area, like start understanding what it's like to be stationed at that place. You can start with Facebook groups if you want, but I'm going to throw a big huge caution out there. A lot of the times the only thing you hear about a duty station are the negative things because those folks are the ones that have just not enjoyed their time. So be really careful and kind of read between the lines of what people say. Especially if they're saying it loudly in some of the groups.
AB 24:33
Because there's so much nuance to that like it can be the greatest area and you had the world's worst time and it has nothing to do with area and everything to do with the Army. Or it could because you moved to Oak Grove I don't know. You know what like, thinking about it you know, people always ask me about Fort Campbell, what do you think, whatever, and I say something to the effect of Fort Campbell's lovely -- we didn't have a great time there. Ah, Oak Grove is great. Sort of. It's a little windy for me, so moving out of Oak Grove was the right decision for our family. People love it. But that's totally like what you're saying. Fort Campbell the area's beautiful, Land Between the Lakes is one of my favorite places on the planet. I never want to live there again.
KA 25:25
Right. And that's fine. And so but the problem, though, is if you're moving to Fort Campbell, the last thing you want to hear is how horrible some out had? Because what are you doing? You're setting yourself up, right.
AB 25:35
I'm fully aware that my perception of Fort Campbell has absolutely nothing to do with the area or even any other unit on base. It is a snapshot of one point in time. Yeah, one unit for one person.
KA 25:49
Yeah, it's true. And it's You're right, it's super nuanced. So I would say wait until you have all kinds of warm fuzzies about a place before you dive into the Facebook groups and start asking people for resources and recommendations, right. So I mean, I'm going to encourage you to go to our website, it's GoMillie.com, you can look up your duty station and get kind of an overview and understand like what you're looking at, when you go to the Facebook group, right? So GoMillie will lay it out for you. And there's maps and photos, that military spouses that live there took, right, there's all kinds of really, like, relevant perspective that you can get, and then take that from there and then start diving down. If there's something that looks like it's interesting for you, or if that that type of, you know, those amenities are important. We also have some ebooks that can help you do the family assessment that we've been talking about. Understand, like, do you need to be 10 minutes from Target or are you okay, being farther out? Alright, that matters, right?
AB 26:46
So let's add, though, that we like your resources so much at Military.com that we have them linked, as you know, to a variety of our own base guide pages. Yeah, that just, you know, just an endorsement there because we know that content you guys to put together is so useful that we think other people should look at it too.
KA 27:05
Thank you. Yeah, and we're super thankful for that. We think it's helped a ton of people because even when I was doing my research for the base guides on Millie, I kept coming across Military.com was like, Oh, great. So Alright, so look up, you know, our our website, Google, obviously, another fun little tip that I give for research is Instagram, look up some prominent instagramers. From those areas, I think about influencers, right, who are going out and eating food and taking photos of their dessert or, you know, going on hikes. Amy, right? Like all the outdoorsy folks like start trying to curate some of that in your feed. So you're starting to kind of get visually immersed in the area before you get there to it kind of gives you a behind the scenes look at how like how the locals live. Or, you know what's incredible about that one of the good photo ops even right, so those are the beautiful places that you're going to want to explore.
AB 27:54
And nothing inspires you about a new duty station as much as desert.
KA 27:58
I mean, for real and like you don't want to live there for six months before you uncover that. Go ahead and do that on day one. Maybe take advantage of that early. And that's honestly, that's part of what we're trying to do, right, we want folks to get adjusted before they go so that they don't lose time when they get there. It's hard enough, y'all we are lonely, when we first get to a duty station, we are tired, we are focused on getting everyone else settle in. So do as much of the legwork as you can while you still have the energy and the excitement behind it. And that way you can maybe skip a little bit of that, you know transition period that takes so long. Alright, my second one is network. We've already talked about this a little bit with the Facebook groups. I want to encourage everyone to reach out to one of our scouts. You just go to the website Scout.GoMillie.com. Contact the Scout, there's a little contact button, you can message them just like hey, I'm moving there. What's it like, right? They love these conversations and they're happy to help. If you get to a point where you need to hire them you have someone that you've already made a relationship or connection with or relationship with. And they'll be standing by maybe there's some trust built up. They're happy to pass along resources, things like that. We also have a Facebook group if you if you're interested in that. But yeah, just go ahead and reach out to them. Start this conversations ask your network. Hey, have you all ever been stationed at Fort Campbell since we're picking on Fort Campbell? They haven't. And they know people that have like ask them to okay do you know anyone that station there? You don't have to be friends with them. But ask reach out to them and say hey, I'm headed to the area. Can you tell me about where you live? Why do you like it? Do you wish you had not chosen it? Those are easy conversations that every one of us are happy to have. The next one I have is connect so and this goes back to my go ahead and get started living there before you get there. I really really like Chamber of Commerce websites, the Visitor Center website. If there are National Parks nearby. Amy I know you're gonna love this. Go ahead and find out where the parks are especially this year, find out what the outdoor activities look like, find out where the restaurants are, where's the nightlife? Where's the downtown? What are the cultural events that are happening in that area, and start putting some of that stuff on your calendar. It's easy to do on Facebook, if you find Facebook events that you're maybe look interesting, go ahead and start like responding to this event and getting it literally on your calendar. Because when you get there, you're going to be tired, and you're going to want to leave your house, but you're not going to know where to go. And the last thing you want to do is pull out your phone and try to figure out, well, what are we doing this weekend? If y'all have husbands like my husband, it's like, what are we doing this week? I don't know. I'm not the party planning committee, you know? Not at all. Do some of this beforehand. Plan little excursions. Give yourself a break from the boxes, you know, it helps you meet folks, you know, while you're out helps you go ahead and get adjusted to your new community. It gets you outside, which is always healthy and good for you. And it just yeah, it just helps you sort of like embrace where you're living. You can, you can get walled in really quickly, and sometimes that's hard to climb out of so just do it as soon as possible.
AB 31:11
Absolutely. Oh my goodness, such good tips. Okay. Last question. Do you have any special advice for our poor little friends who are trying to deal with moving overseas or back from overseas or between places that are overseas, there's a lot of seas and you are.
KA 31:29
So I've never done an OCONUS overseas move. I've always been one that has been scared to leave, I'm such a homebody, my husband bless him, he's always wanted to go overseas. But my number one tip is probably just going to be get as organized as you possibly can organize yourself, organize your files, organize your stuff, or as your mind and do everything farther in advance than you think you need to. If you're overseas already, you should have already gotten yourself organized to a point. So try not to lose that. Right? Try to hang on to that in those systems and try to keep things fresh in your mind so that when you come back, it's not as jarring as it probably was the first time but heading overseas for the first time back to reach out to your networks, tap other people for advice. If you're headed to somewhere that you know someone is already there, that's an obvious, you know, hey, tell me everything. What do I need to know every step of the way, and then rely on the resources like the official do de resources to the sponsor program for oconus moves is still pretty vibrant. And there are tons of people who are eager and happy to help you out for living overseas specifically, so tap into those resources as well.
AB 32:39
Wonderful. Kellie, thank you so much for coming on PCS with Military.com. I appreciate your time, and all of your advice and expertise and that sweet network of awesome you've got going on there.
KA 32:51
Thank you so much, Amy. This was awesome. And I encourage everyone to go to Military.com for all of their awesome PCS resources and enjoy the rest of the series.
