No Brandy, not in the sense that you could cash in his Post 9/11 GI Bill benefits in exchange for money. However, if your husband’s tuition costs more than what Tuition Assistance will pay, the difference can come out of his GI Bill benefits (once he is eligible) through a program called Tuition Top-Up.
However, something that may help you eliminate your student debt in the future is the Student Loan Forgiveness Act of 2012 (if it passes).
Under part of the plan, loan payments would be capped at 10% of the borrower’s discretionary income and the plan can provide forgiveness after 10 payment years. Discretionary income is considered 150% of the poverty line for an individual or family.
After the borrower makes 120 payments, the forgiveness part of the plan kicks in. A payment is considered valid if it:
On or after the date of enactment, and upon making 120 payments, borrowers can be forgiven up to $45,520 in principal and fees plus accrued interest. For borrowers who predate the date of enactment, there isn’t a forgiveness cap. Because prior payments can count, those who have been repaying their loans for 10 years or more could be eligible for forgiveness right away, if the bill passes.
Keep an eye on this bill and keep making your student loan payments. If it passes, it could be your ticket to student loan debt freedom.
VA will publish more details on the program as they become available at our VOW website.
Thank you for your interest and please feel free to pass this message on to another Veteran.
Sincerely,
Curtis L. Coy
Deputy Under Secretary for Economic Opportunity
U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs”
I”ll keep sending out information as I receive it.
Ron
If you are active duty Coast Guard, you wouldn’t qualify for the housing allowance regardless if you used Tuition Top-Up or the Post 9/11 GI Bill itself or not, because you are drawing BAH. If you are in the Coast Guard Reserve, and using TA and Top-Up, you would not get the housing allowance either because TA and Top-Up are not considered using your GI Bill even though the Top-Up portion does come out of your Post 9/11 GI Bill benefits.
To answer your second question, yes if you are not on active duty or if you are in the Reserves or out altogether, you would get the housing allowance and book stipend by using your Post 9/11 GI Bill.
As far as using the Minnesota GI Bill, it won’t hurt your GI Bill at all. Under their program, Minnesota sends the money to you, so it isn’t dedicated to tuition or fees. If it were, then the amount VA would pay toward your tuition would be reduced, because keep in mind, the VA is the past payer.
But because the money comes to you and you can do anything you want with it, you should still get the same amount from your GI Bill as if you were not getting the extra money.
Mike, you might as well use your Post 9/11 GI Bill benefits because if you are not currently serving (and it sounds like you are not) then you can’t transfer your benefits to your spouse anyway. The way Congress wrote the rules, you have to be serving at the time you make a transfer request, have served for at least six years and have at least four years left on your enlistment (unless you are within four years of retiring – then the additional time is reduced to what you need to get you to 20 years of service).
So to use your Chapter 33 benefits, send in VA Form 22-1990 from the eBenefits website and choose an election date in Part II Block 9f after your Chapter 30 Montgomery GI Bill benefits are exhausted. The VA will see that you want to use your additional 12 months, so they will “loan” you what you need to get you to the end of the semester, so that your payments keep coming. It should be seamless on your end.
When you get your new Certificate of Eligibility, it will show that you have less than 12 months left as you indicated.
It depends on if your five years served were all on your first enlistment or if you had already completed one enlistment Honorably and this is your second enlistment. If you are into your 5th year of a six year or more enlistment, then no you would not be eligible to use your Montgomery GI Bill or Post 9/11 GI Bill Benefits. However, if you enlisted for three or four years and you are on your second enlistment, then yes you would be eligible to use your GI Bill benefits.
If this is your first enlistment and you want to try and get your discharge upgraded, you can start by submitting DD Form 293 to your Branch Discharge Review Board. However, I have to warn you – the Board goes into each case assuming the discharge is correct. It is your job (or the job of the lawyer you hire if you choose to go that route) to convince the Board otherwise.
I don’t want to discourage you and I don’t have the figures for the Navy, but I do know that only 41% of the Army upgrade requests end up getting approved and upgraded. But if you have a strong case, go for it. It can take up to a year for a ruling and there are no guarantees, but at least it is an avenue to pursue should you choose to do so.
With 28 months of service and his medical not being service-related, yes he would be at the 70% Post 9/11 GI Bill tier, meaning the VA would pay 70% of his tuition directly to his school and he would get 70% of his monthly housing allowance and 70% of the book stipend for up to 36 months. So the answer to your last question is yes.
But the amount he would get would be much higher than 70% of $1,000. For example, for the zip code 90001 in Los Angeles, the full housing allowance is $2001.00 per month. So his 70% of that would be $1,400.70. His 70% of the book stipend would be $29.17 per credit.
Under the Montgomery GI Bill (MGIB), he would get $1,473 per month, have to pay all his own education expenses and most likely only have 22 months of benefits that he can use.
If he meets the Hazelwood Act requirements, he might have 150 hours of benefits he can use there in conjunction with his MGIB – in other words get paid from both the Hazelwood Act and MGIB. He can’t do that under the Post 9/11 GI Bill. He would have to exhaust his New GI Bill first before he could use his Hazelwood Act benefits.
His best bet might be using the Hazelwood Act/MGIB combo, but he would have to live in Texas to use his Hazelwood Act benefits.
I can’t exactly tell which GI Bill you are referring to Benny that you used in 2007. Because you say you are “currently in the SC National Guard,” I’m assuming you were on active duty at the time. If so, then you have the Montgomery GI Bill (MGIB) which is good in your case until 2017, however, that GI Bill does not have any transfer-to-dependents options to it.
So a better option would be to switch over to the Post 9/11 GI Bill. When you switch, the number of months of MGIB benefits you had left will switch over too. With your 18 months of deployment time, you should come in at the 70% tier, meaning your daughter would get 70% of her tuition and fees paid directly to her school, and she would get paid 70% of the book stipend and housing allowance.
With 18 years in already, you will have to sign up for a couple more years to bring you up to 20 years of service. Once you have your extension in place, go to the milConnect website and make your request. Find your daughter’s record and enter in the number of months you would like to transfer to her.
Her request will be approved before she graduates from high school, so she will have to wait to request her Certificate of Eligibility until she graduates or turns 18. When ready, she can submit VA Form 22-1990e from the eBenefits website to get her certificate in about 8 to 10 weeks. She will need a copy of it when she enrolls in school.
By saying he “signed a form” Lindy, I’m thinking he went through the transfer of benefits website and actually transferred the months of benefits to your three daughters. If you daughters each already have their Certificate of Eligibility, then they are ready to use their Post 9/11 GI Bill benefits.
Whether your daughter who wants to go to medical school is married or not doesn’t really change her benefits, except if she marries a servicemember serving on active duty. Then, because he would be already drawing BAH for her, she would not get the monthly housing allowance but would get the book stipend and her tuition/fees paid.
As far as the Yellow Ribbon Program, marriage would not have an effect on her using that program either, provided she is eligible for it in the first place. The Yellow Ribbon Program is a feature inside of the Post 9/11 GI Bill. It sounds like she would be eligible with your husband having over three years of active duty, which puts him at the 100% tier — a requirement to use the Yellow Ribbon Program.
That program would be beneficial for her if she has to pay out-state tuition or if she attends a private school where the tuition cost exceeds the limit of $17,500 per year. Then, under the Yellow Ribbon Program, her school could pick up a maximum of 50% of the difference with the VA paying an equal amount. Of course that is provided her school is a Yellow Ribbon school and her program is covered under their agreement with the VA.
Actually, Bobby, if you are at the 40% Post 9/11 GI Bill tier, tuition/fees, the housing allowance and book stipend would all be paid at 40%.
As far as the Hazelwood Act benefits, the rules to qualify for it are as follows:
My concern is that you did not enter the military in Texas, so you might not qualify for the Hazelwood Act, but it doesn’t hurt to try. You can send in a HE-V application packet and see if it is approved or not.
It goes deeper than that Kerry. Not only can you not transfer Post 9/11 GI Bill benefits because you did not serve “on or after August 1, 2009” as Congress wrote the rules, you had to be currently serving on or after that date when you make a transfer request. So just having served after the August date and not serving at the time you make a transfer would make you ineligible to make a transfer.
Congress wrote the rules the way they did because they were focused on using the Post 9/11 GI Bill as a retention tool. So to make a transfer request and get it approved, the servicemember had to be currently serving, have at least six years of service and have at least four years left on his/her enlistment at the time of the transfer request. If the servicemember was retirement eligible, meaning having served for at least 20 years, then the additional time needed was waived.
But because they set the beginning of the Post 9/11 GI Bill eligibility period at September 11, 2001, thousands of career veterans retiring before August 1, 2009 fully qualified for the transfer option but never had an opportunity to make a transfer request, due to the serving “on or after . . .” clause.
In the past, there have been a couple pieces of legislation that would have allowed for a one-time transfer opportunity, but neither piece even made it to a vote. I have started a petition that I will send to the President that if approved would allow for a transfer opportunity.