The Order Matters
A plain-language guide to VA education benefits for military families. Free to read, and now on the retail stores.
The book lays out how a military family’s education benefits fit together, and why the order you use them in changes what you get, often by thousands of dollars. It is written the way a person actually needs it explained, no jargon, from someone who went through the same maze planning his own daughter’s college.
Where to find the book
Also available for purchase: Amazon · Apple Books · Barnes & Noble
The ebook is live and free to read on this site and on Google Play. A paperback edition is in approval and coming soon. The knowledge should be free, so it is: the book points you to the official VA and DoD sources so you can verify the rules yourself.
What it covers
Written for military families and the people who advise them, The Order Matters walks through the benefits in plain language and shows how they stack:
The Post-9/11 GI Bill
What it pays, how tuition, housing, and the books stipend work, and how transferring it to a spouse or child (TEB) fits the plan.
Chapter 35 DEA
Dependents’ Educational Assistance, who qualifies, and how it interacts with a transferred GI Bill.
The Fry Scholarship
For the children and spouses of service members who died in the line of duty, and why it and Chapter 35 cannot be used at once.
The Yellow Ribbon Program
How it extends coverage past the GI Bill cap at participating schools.
The aggregate cap
The ceiling on total months of entitlement, and how to plan a family’s benefits around it.
The phase approach
The heart of the book: using each benefit in sequence, phase by phase, so a family reaches further and often covers more years of school.
Who wrote it, and why it is free
The Order Matters was written by RA, a retired U.S. Air Force Air Traffic Controller and the founder of We Got You 1776, after he ran into the VA education-benefits maze planning his own daughter’s college. It is published by We Got You 1776, which hosts every one of its books free on this site. The free companion app, College Tool, does the same math on your own numbers.