Benefits budget planner
Heading to school or training and want to know what you'll actually bring in each month? Enter your dates and your benefits, and see a clear, month-by-month breakdown built from the current published VA rates.
Which education or training benefit are you using?
Use one continuous term. Housing isn't paid during breaks between terms, so plan each term separately.
Your Post-9/11 GI Bill details
Your other monthly income
How the housing number works:the Post-9/11 GI Bill Monthly Housing Allowance equals the military BAH for an E-5 with dependents at your school's ZIP code, scaled by your eligibility tier and your rate of pursuit. It's prorated for partial first and last months, and it isn't paid for online-only study at the full rate or during breaks between terms. VR&E pays its own subsistence allowance instead, unless you elect the BAH rate. This planner applies all of those rules.
What it doesn't include: tuition and fees (paid straight to the school), the Yellow Ribbon program, and state education benefits, which vary by state. Your official award letter is the final word on every amount.
The app behind the tools
MusterVault keeps all of this in one place.
These free tools are a small slice of what the app does. MusterVault is a free Windows app that makes you the most organized, best-prepared veteran your VSO sees all week:
- Keeps your DD-214, decision letters, and medical records encrypted on your own computer
- Runs the same benefits math this planner uses, saved right alongside your records
- Tracks your symptoms in a dated journal that exports to a clean PDF
- Keeps your C&P and VA appointments in one place
- Builds a one-click handoff packet for your VSO
- Works fully offline: no cloud, no account, no one else's hands on your file
Informational only, using published VA rates for the 2025-2026 year, applied to the details you enter; nothing is stored. Rates change annually and the official amounts are what the VA pays. MusterVault is not affiliated with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Sources: va.gov Post-9/11 GI Bill rates, benefits.va.gov VR&E subsistence rates, and the DoD BAH tables.