• For service members pondering early retirement, costs can pinch home budget

    By Bill Briggs, NBC News contributor

    Amid the ongoing exit of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, more service members are mulling a shift to the civilian work force and asking the key financial question: What will I miss if I walk away from my military pension?


    The short answer: A lot.

    Unlike private-sector jobs where employees become partially vested in their company’s pension no matter how long they’ve held their positions, service members pocket no pension payments if they exit the military before logging 20 years. (If they remain in the armed forces for 20 years or more, service members receive up to 50 percent of their base salary upon retirement).

    “I think that question is being asked more often now because of unknowns on both sides – people wondering how the drawdown will affect them and, on the other side, those who are seeing a lot of instability in civilian job market,” said Kim Lankford, a writer for Kiplinger, the personal finance magazine, and author of "Kiplinger's Financial Field Manual," sent to military bases around the world. She also is married to a 17-year Army doctor.

    According to U.S. military organizations that Lankford covers, 83 percent of service members “don’t make it to 20 years — which means that only 17 percent qualify for the pension,” she said. “There’s a lot to consider when deciding whether or not to stay.”

    A corporation may be able to outbid the military when it comes to an ex-soldier’s new salary. But to truly calculate that wage rate, service members need to know what their sacrificing in taking that civilian paycheck, Lankford said.

    For example, during their careers, thousands of military folks are temporarily stationed in locales without a state income tax, like Florida and Texas. Even when they later are transferred to bases where state taxes are levied, service members are allowed to retain their residency in the non-tax states. That perk ends with a military retirement.

    When it comes to health care, military retirees (people who stay more than 20 years but not yet age 65) pay a small premium for Tricare Prime - currently $230 per year for individual coverage and $460 per year for families (and increasing to $269.28 per year for individuals and $538.56 per year for families after Oct. 1, 2012), according to Lankford. (Disabled service members get health care through the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.) 

    Compare that to the average civilian family pays about $15,073 a year for health coverage, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. The average individual pays about $5,429 annually. While employers generally foot 60 to 80 percent of that bill, workers pay for the rest.

    “All those deductions add up,” Lankford said. Veterans who bid farewell to the military “are often very surprised to learn that civilian jobs in higher dollar amounts than military jobs can actually leave them less take-home pay.”

    One other major decision for troops considering short military careers surrounds the G.I. Bill, which now pays for a veteran’s college costs at up to $17,500 per year. That benefit can be transferred to a service member’s children if he or she spends six years in the armed forces — and is willing to commit to another four-year stint, Lankford says.

    Then there are the housing-cost breaks military members enjoy. (For those who live on base, housing is free). Service members who rent or own their own homes receive a tax-free housing allowance than can exceed $2,000 per month depending on their pay grade, their number of dependents and the city in which they live.

    “If a service member is thinking about leaving,” Lankford said, “they should be sure to include the loss of that tax-free allowance when calculating their new civilian salary.”

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  • Study: U.S. colleges doing more for homecoming veterans but gaps remain

    Steve Abel

    Thomas Krause, a former Marine sergeant, is now a sophomore at Rutgers University. He credits the school's veterans-support program for keeping him enrolled.

    By Bill Briggs, NBC News contributor

    Without the veteran-support hub on his campus, former Marine sergeant Thomas Krause can quickly calculate the odds that he long ago would have dropped out of Rutgers University.

    "If this service was not provided for me, there's probably a 1 percent chance I would still be here," said Krause, a pre-business sophomore. He volunteers as well at the Rutgers Office of Veteran and Military Programs and Services, which supplies returning service members with academic tutors and advice on how to socially blend into university life. After starting classes last September, Krause walked into the veterans' office two months later and immediately — finally — connected with fellow students. He spoke from that office on Wednesday. 

    "Here, I met a bunch of guys who had also served and who were going to school, the same age group, the same mentality," said Krause, 24. "Because I'm in class with 18 year olds, it's a weird transition. So I go out with my friends here, and I currently even live with one of the guys I met here. It's pretty much: This place is my Rutgers life."

    Rutgers is often cited by groups that aid college veterans as one of the nation's top schools for helping ease former military personnel into and through the rigors of higher education. 

    On Wednesday, a new survey of 690 U.S. colleges was released showing that 62 percent of those schools offer programs and services specifically designed for military service members and veterans — up from 57 percent in 2009, when the same survey was previously conducted. 

    The survey, "From Soldier to Student II: Assessing Campus Programs for Veterans and Service Members," was completed via a partnership between the American Council on Education (ACE), the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU), NASPA: Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education and NAVPA, the National Association of Veteran’s Program Administrators.

     


    Other key findings showed across-the-board improvement since 2009, when the post-9/11 G.I. Bill went into effect, massively boosting available financial aid for homecoming veterans: 

    • Seventy-one percent of institutions that offer programs and services for military and veteran students have a dedicated office serving those students, up from 49 percent in 2009.
    • Eighty-four percent of the institutions that offer services for veteran and military students provide counseling to assist with post-traumatic stress disorder, compared to 16 percent in 2009.
    • Fifty-five percent of the institutions that offer services for veteran and military students have staff trained to assist with physical disabilities, up from 33 percent in 2009, and 36 percent have staff trained to assist specifically with brain injuries, up from 23 percent in 2009.
    • Forty-seven percent offer a veteran student lounge or gathering place, up from 12 percent in 2009.

    Steven Harriott

    Thomas Krause during his days with the U.S. Marine Corps.

    “It is very encouraging," said Young M. Kim, a research analyst at the Center for Policy Analysis and one of the study's four authors. 

    "But while there are areas of improvement, I don’t think everything we’re sharing today is, by any means, close to indicating that everything is very well off," Kim added. "There are places where there are still gaps.

    "One that comes to mind is the transitional issues — veterans coming back from combat theaters really can be (better) helped by faculty and staff members on campus with their transition on campus. And for service members who get redeployed, and that happens quite frequently with a lot of men women, they sometimes struggle with re-enrollment when they come back from military services." 

    The authors received survey responses from 262 public four-year colleges, 238 public two-year schools, 164 private not-for-profit four-year schools, but just 26 for-profit schools. A few dozen for-profit colleges were openly chastised earlier this year for hawking their campuses as veteran-friendly yet failing to meet that sales pitch. Returning servicemen and women on the G.I. Bill make attractive enrollment candidates for many schools because their G.I. tuition reimbursement is paid directly from the federal government to the colleges. 

    Related: Company accused of deception turns GIBill.com over to Veterans Affairs

    "We were somewhat disappointed to get so few responses from for-profit institutions," Kim said. 

    At Rutgers, veterans freshly back from Iraq, Afghanistan or other service locales can turn to the military-support office for almost any question they have about launching or maintaining a college career, Krause said. Even better, it allows veterans to mingle with similar people. Another key: that center is run by a former Army officer, retired Col. Stephen G. Abel. 

    "They make everything so easy for us. They make everything flow," Krause said. "Any problem we have, they can guide us in the correct manner or they can take care of it themselves." 

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  • Thousands of veterans failing in latest battlefield: college

    Lucas Velasquez

    Lucas Velasquez takes part in a medical training drill performed outside Fallujah. Velasquez, a Navy corpsman, is carrying the stretcher in the front.

    By Bill Briggs, NBC News contributor

    During a pair of six-month stints in and around Fallujah, Iraq –- then a fiercely volatile city –- Navy corpsman Lucas Velasquez came to know about life.

    And death.


    From late 2005 through early 2007, not long after nearly 100 U.S. troops and more than 1,350 insurgents were killed in Fallujah during Operation Phantom Fury, Velasquez routinely rendered emergency aid to wounded Marines while ducking bullets, rocket-propelled grenades and IED blasts. In uniform, Velasquez was smart and quick, adept at practicing field medicine literally while under the gun.

    In 2007, after retiring from the Navy, Velasquez, then 23, enrolled at Columbus State University in western Georgia. He promptly failed four of his first six classes.

    Lucas Velasquez

    Lucas Velasquez enrolled at Columbus State University in Georgia after retiring from the Navy. He is pictured on the bottom, second from the right, with his Kappa Sigma fraternity brothers.

    "It was a struggle," he said.

    Velasquez hadn’t been in a classroom for more than five years. Instead of taking strategic lecture notes or studying highlights in the syllabus when prepping for exams, he scribbled nearly every word his professors uttered and tried to absorb every fact in his textbooks. Deeper, there was a vast cultural chasm between other freshmen and the survivor of multiple firefights and risky missions.

    “At 19, I was in combat as opposed to trying to go find a party,” said Velasquez, injured before he came home. “They really don’t realize how precious life can be, how it can go away in the drop of a dime. They’re more worried about what they’re going to be wearing to school tomorrow, or the spring break that’s coming up. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just two different people.”

    Among the approximately 800,000 military veterans now attending U.S. colleges, an estimated 88 percent drop out of school during their first year and only 3 percent graduate, according a report forwarded by the University of Colorado Denver, citing a March 22, 2012 study by the Colorado Workforce Development Council.

    Related: Company accused of deception turns GIBill.com over to VA

    Scores of former servicemen and servicewomen who are among the best in the world at defusing bombs, tracking the enemy, patching bloody limbs, or negotiating with wary Afghans become futilely lost when trying to author an English paper.

    Indeed, the vast, life-experience divide between war veterans and teens fresh out of high school – all now sharing the same classrooms – can make the scholastic transition awkward and arduous for ex-soldiers, said Michael Dakduk, executive director of Student Veterans of America, a support network for ex-military college students. SVA now has chapters on more than 500 campuses

    Mix in the fat gap of time between the vets’ high school days and their attempts to blend into college life and the reasons for the dropout rate become even more obvious.

    “They are (taking) academically rigorous courses after being removed from the academic setting for so long,” Dakduk said.

    “I didn’t know how to study,” Velasquez said of his first months at Columbus State. “In the military classes (we had taken), they spoon fed you everything because they didn’t want you to fail. It was a struggle going from a structured lifestyle to one where everything is on you.”

    A number of colleges – Dakduk mentioned the University of Arizona, Syracuse University, Rutgers University, Purdue University, Columbia University and Dartmouth College – offer well-crafted services that truly help retired military folks thrive in the college classroom.

    But some schools falsely sell themselves as “military friendly” simply to attract veterans on the G.I. Bill when, in reality, they don’t have the adequate infrastructure or counselors to help former soldiers succeed, Velasquez said. After his initial failures, Velasquez had to independently seek external tutoring. He eventually boosted his grade point average to 3.8.

    Related: Pentagon, Congress eye new payday loan rules

    Under the post-9/11 G.I. Bill, the federal government covers up to 100 percent of veterans’ tuition and fees. That money goes directly to the colleges, making the ex-servicemen and servicewomen financially attractive enrollees.

    Earlier this year, SVA revoked chapters at 26 for-profit colleges that failed to meet the organization's requirements, mainly having a student-veteran – not an administrator – run the chapter. Those booted schools included the Art Institute of New York City, Brown Mackie College in Akron, Ohio, DeVry University in Orlando, Fla., ECPI College of Technology in Raleigh, N.C., and ITT Technical Institute in South Bend, Ind.

    The misleading, so-called military-friendly sales pitch made by some colleges to attract vets, Velasquez said, is a big reason for the dropout rate.

    “There was a concern around certain predatory, for-profit schools using our brand to legitimize their programs,” Dakduk said. (He added that better statistics are needed to precisely calculate the veteran dropout rate; the post-9/11 G.I. Bill was enacted three years ago, which means, Dakduk said, not enough time has passed to gauge its impact on today’s enrolled ex-soldiers.)

    In August 2011, Velasquez transferred to the University of Colorado Denver after getting married. (He had been to Colorado earlier in his life and purposely picked the state for a new start). UCD, he learned, had a three-tiered system to help vets transition from military to college, stay in school and then move from graduation to the workforce. As part of that program, the school assigns an upperclassman to incoming ex-military students to mentor them socially and academically. It’s based on a similar program used at U.S. military bases.

    “What we try to facilitate with that is the camaraderie -- the community -- because that’s one of the biggest things (ex-military) people miss,” said Cameron Cook, head of UCD’s veteran student services. “It’s one of the hardest things: missing your team, your friends in the military. That’s really hard to let go.”

    A retired Marine, Cook soon e-mailed Velasquez and invited him to participate in the program.

    “This is perfect, just what veterans need, something that helps them take that veteran experience and use it in college,” Velasquez said.

    Related: Feds move to help out underwater military homeowners

    Cook and his team also try to help vets who carry to campus “the invisible injuries” of war –- post-traumatic stress disorder.

    “When they get out of the military, the average student veteran is so focused on transition into college, finding a place to live, getting on the G.I. Bill. They’re very busy reintegrating,” Cook said. “But then, after that first year, everything kind of slows down and that’s when the shadows come in.”

    The “shadows” of PTSD, including rampant anxiety and sleeplessness, often are triggered by daily stress – for example, by exams.

    “We see a big increase [in students presenting with PTSD symptoms] right at midterms and it grows exponentially until finals,” Cook said.

    “One student told me that at the beginning of every semester he feels like he’s getting ready to go on a deployment,” Cook said. “And you can parallel finals to being like miniature battles.” 

    “And I’ve had other students say: ‘I don’t know why I’m stressed about a biology test when I was in Fallujah. Why am I stressed about this when I’ve been through so much previously?’ The reason is: the Fallujah experience gets linked to the stress of midterms. They already have stress and then academic stresses just build on that.”

    Or, as one retired non-commissioned officer who attends UCD summed up the challenges of the veteran-college experience and high dropout rate: "I was the man in the military. We had so much responsibility [overseas], people's lives were on the line. Now I'm sitting next to an 18-year-old and I'm struggling to keep up with him in this class."

    Bill Briggs is a frequent contributor to msnbc.com and author of “The Third Miracle.” 

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