GI Bill Changes Are Law!

Wow, I just found out Congress has finally passed the GI bill revisions I talked about here. This is really exciting. The GI bill is now double the benefit it once was. It now will pay living expenses and allows the beneficiary to transfer their unused benefits to a spouse or child. You can read more about it here. My mind is spinning with the news; this really does change how we will look at our options and I'm eager to have Oliver home to talk about it. If he gets out, we are in a much better position to send him to school full time without becoming impoverished. And if he stays in and either doesn't go to school or does a lot of it in the military, we can send Wyatt to school on the money as he'll be a senior in high school when Oliver is looking at retirement. I need to find a more detailed article about it so I can think some more.

MGI Bill Changes Coming?

I read something this Sunday in our newspaper that had me pretty excited. There are a couple competing bills being pushed in the House right now that would expand the Montgomery GI Bill quite a bit. Both reintroduce a living stipend, something that was once a core benefit after WWII, and increase the tuition amount, although one is definitely more generous than the other. Other changes include making GI bill funds ineligible to be counted as income for Federal financial aid purposes and increasing the window to use such benefits after service to 15 years from the current 10. It looks pretty good that at least one of these bills will pass. Several higher-ups worry this will hurt retention, not help it. Frankly, I think they are right. When I heard these changes, it got me excited. My first thought was, yay, here's another option for us if we decide to get out! Oliver still has to finish his schooling; it's been pretty tough for him to find the time to do it while on active duty, which was the original plan. With all these changes, we could conceivably consider sending him to school full time, while I worked a part time job. With both boys in school, we could probably juggle it so there was no child care needed, either. Who knows what we will do, or if it will end up being good enough to push us in that direction, but it's something to think about. If anyone wants to read the article themselves, here it is.