hey guys thanks again for tuning in to the channel today i want to cover something super important with you guys today we're going to talk about transferring your education benefits to your dependents we're going to cover who's eligible transfer details how to do it strategies and most importantly the warnings associated with transferring the benefits so stick around if this interests you hey guys if you're new to the channel my name is jason and this is the military bottom line via my youtube channel and the podcast i am here to help you guys learn from my experiences others experiences and help everybody that's considering joining the military currently in the military or veterans or retirees make the most of their contracts and the benefits that they've earned so if this is something that might be interesting to you or might serve you some value definitely consider hitting that red subscribe button and stick it around for future videos alright guys so if you clicked on this video i'm going to assume you already know what the gi bill is if you don't know what the gi bill is then first check out my video on the post 911 gi bill the do's and the don'ts linked above also linked below before we get into it i want to make sure that i prevent you from wasting any time so i'm going to make a couple things clear before we get into it so that you can determine if you should continue watching the main thing i want to make clear to you guys is that while the gi bill is technically a va education benefit it is up to the dod the department of defense to actually approve your transfer request this is because those that are transferring must be on active duty or in the select reserves unfortunately this means if you are a veteran or a retiree and you have not yet initiated that transfer process you no longer have that opportunity it sucks i know super sorry to tell you uh but that's the reality of it if you're looking for creative ways to use it i've also made a video about the five unique ways to use your gi bill again linked above or linked below for the rest of you that are on their way into the military or currently serving let's get into it and talk about how to transfer your gi bill benefits so like i already said but we'll say it again just to make sure those that are eligible to transfer their education benefits are those that are on active duty or in the select reserves in order to initiate and apply for the transfer of education benefits you must have already served six years at the time your transfer application is approved this is six years in active duty six years in the national guard six years in the reserves or any combination just six years of service and you must be willing to accept that there is a an additional four year requirement from the time your application is approved but hold up this is important it is critical for you to understand that the four year additional required service that comes from your transition of education benefits is in no way associated with your eas date in that administrative part of your contract there is not a contract that you sign when you transfer your benefits this means that you have two dates that you need to now consider and this comes with a huge warning that we'll talk about at the end all right so who can you actually transfer your education benefits to this one's pretty simple you can transfer it to your qualified dependents what are you actually able to transfer essentially you can transfer your gi bill the way you have if you have 36 months and a hundred percent of the gi bill benefit you can disperse those 36 months however you want to your dependents if you have 24 months of 50 of the education benefit you can evenly disperse those 24 months to your dependents whatever you have in your gi bill bank is what you're able to transfer whoever you decide to transfer your education benefits to whether it be your spouse or your child they are going to receive the same tuition payments the same book stipend and the same bah that you would with a few stipulations the main stipulation that i am aware of is that if you are serving on active duty and you give your spouse your gi bill to use your spouse will not receive the bah because you are already receiving that bh on active duty i don't know it's just the rule however if your child uses your gi bill while you're on active duty your child will receive bah that's the only stipulation that i know of if you know of anything additional to that let me know in the comments all right so how quickly can they actually use these benefits if you've been in six years and one day you transfer your education benefits it gets approved by bing bada boom your dependents have your gi bill your spouses are able to use your gi bill immediately as soon as that gets approved they're going to be able to get a certificate of eligibility your spouse can use your benefit while you're on active duty but like i said it will not receive bah and your spouse has up to 15 years to use the months of gi bill that you have transferred to them i know that there's the forever gi bill now but that doesn't really matter unfortunately so if your spouse is not going to use it inside that 15 years and it is the forever gi bill bring it back to you so when can your children use it your children may start to use the benefit only after you finish at least 10 years of service so at six years in one day you applied to transfer your education benefits four years has passed you've locked in that transfer you're at 10 years of service you can now have your kids use this benefits your kids may use the benefit while you're on active duty or after you've separated your children may not use the benefit until they've gotten a high school diploma or equivalency certificate or they have reached 18 years of age they will qualify for a monthly housing allowance even when you're on active duty like i said before your children do not have to use the benefit within 15 years of separation from active duty so that's another difference while your spouse only has 15 years to use that gi bill your children don't have 15 years but they only have till the age of 26. so again if your child is going to reach the age of 26 before they actually use it just bring it back to yourself to protect it so that's the forever gi bill and you'll still be able to use it all right so how do you actually transfer these benefits step one go to mill connect the link to that is below in the description but if you go to milconnect you can see where it says transfer education benefits you're going to click on that and it's going to take you to a login page you can either log in using your cac or your password and id once you're logged in you'll be taken to a page where you can see where you see a list of all your registered dependents and a place to input the number of months i'm not going to show you a screenshot of this because immediately once you get to that page there's you know names and information um but basically it's going to show you a list of all your dependents that have been registered in years dears defense enrollment eligibility reporting system so all the dependents that you have registered in deers will show up on this page within each line of each dependent it's going to have a place where you can click the up arrow or type in the number of months that you want to give them obviously you can only disperse the number of months that you have left so if you have 36 months and four dependents that's like nine months for each dependent if you want to split it up like that so once you do that you're going to click submit and then that's going to initiate the process and you're going to want to confirm with your education counselor or your education office that that application of transfer has actually gone through and confirm when it has gone through so that you know that at that point in time your four years starts all right so where is the strategy involved in this if you are going to be a career service member or thinking you're going to do at least 10 years at the six year mark i would highly encourage you to initiate that transfer the word that i've gotten from counselors on this is that it is best at six years in one day initiate the transfer and evenly disperse all the months of your gi bill to your dependents all of them even if you want that you think you might want it back you can always bring it back to you another time once you've started that transfer to your your dependents that four year timer starts right then you can then move those months around and you're not affecting your four-year obligation all right so the warning this is super important because it can cost you tens of thousands if not over a hundred thousand dollars i was talking to a nice gentleman that was helping me out with this and he told me a story of a of a service member that was given a bill for a hundred and twenty five thousand dollars because of this mistake so here it is the four-year obligation of service that comes with transferring your education benefits is in no way associated with your actual military contract and your eas or end of active service they are two completely separate things so you're going to have two dates that you need to pay attention to you have your eas and you have now this four year requirement with the education benefits if you transfer your benefits and you get out at your eas which happens to be three years and your wife has been using the gi bill for those three years you got out after three years one year shy of confirming that transfer if you get out shy of confirming that transfer those three years that your wife or your spouse has been using those benefits was illegitimate essentially she did not end up rating those benefits and they were they are going to send you a bill for the book stipend for the monthly bah for the tuition payments three years of this can be a massive massive amount of money this is why it is so important to one apply for the transfer as soon as possible and apply only when you know that there's going to be reasonable expectation every expectation that you're going to finish that four years there's only a few circumstances where you don't actually have to finish the four years if you have an approved transfer of education benefits in and you fall short of the four years because you either died or you had a hardship discharge which must be indicated on the discharge paperwork you got a medical discharge or an involuntary discharge because of downsizing of the military those are legitimate reasons to have that four years waived otherwise if you fall short of those four years and any gi bill has been used by your dependents inside of that four years you're gonna get a bill a massive freaking bill so make sure that when you transfer those benefits the day is approved four years from that day mark it on your calendar and don't exit the service if your dependents have used your benefits and if you have not confirmed that you've cleared this window so it's always important to go to your education office check on meal connect double check triple check quadruple check to make sure that you're not going to get hit with a bill when you exit service if nobody has used it and you get out before four years it doesn't really matter just transfer it back to yourself you'll be okay all right guys i think that's it i think i covered all the information i know about transferring the education benefits it's really a great opportunity to have a generational impact on your family and make sure that they're set up for success they're going to school for free and even maybe getting paid for it or maybe you just put that ph into your pocket i hope you guys enjoyed this video i hope it provided you some value if it did give it a thumbs up give it a subscribe i'd love to see you around here again and if you 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