REfeg

Nono, At the end of the year you will get a form to fill out letting the VA know if you want to waive disability or drill pay. To ensure you are making the financially sound decision, take your monthly disability dollar amount and divide that by 30. This will give you the amount you are paid daily in disability ($/day). Next, take the calculated daily disability rate and compare that to your daily reserve amount to see which one you would like to waive. In my case, (waiving disability) the amount of debt per year is my daily disability rate multiplied by the number of "drill days". I get my number of drill days at the end of the year in a letter seeing they do not line up with the physical days you report to drill. The VA messed up my first year out and did not collect the debt so this year I had twice the usual amount to repay. They can take it in lump sum or payments. Note: If you do not fill out the paperwork and send it back, the assumption is that you will waive your disability seeing this will limit the veterans debt in MOST cases. You must do the math to see which one financially benefits you to ensure that waiving the disability is right for you. This is just me and my families experience so please do the due diligence of fact checking with the VA. Now, with the interaction between drill and disability, what does your number of days look like at the end of a STRAP year, and will your disability be affected by the STRAP stipend? My assumption so no one goes into a panic- The VA will make you waive disability for the "drill days" (I assume drill days during STRAP is a weekend covered by the fact you are in school), and the STRAP stipend will not affect ones disability. This assumption can be costly if not tracked down seeing your real income will be one of the following (holding all other household income constant): -Option 1: STRAP stipend with a waived disability. Net income = STRAP stipend + Drill Pay. -Option 2: STRAP stipend plus your disability check. Net income = STRAP stipend + Drill Pay + Disability - Waived disability for drill days. Both options yield different results while still accruing a 1 year service commitment per 6mos of training. I ask these questions so we can calculate the cost/benefit for all of the options out there while attending CRNA school. Hope this helps. Please let me know if you find any conflicting information so we are all well informed. I had to learn this through the letter coming in the mail at the end of the first year.....less than ideal. No one has been able to provide information about the congruent payments. Thanks,

Hello, does anyone know how a military disability payment is affected by taking STRAP? Active duty for years, then to the reserves. At the end of the year, they assign me a debt to waive my disability pay for the days I drill, seeing the payment is more for drill. Not sure how the stipend is looked at in terms of drill days or is that completely independent. Thanks in advance.