The Order Matters
A plain-language guide to VA education benefits for military families. Free to read, download or print.
The book lays out how a military family’s education benefits fit together, and why the order changes what you get, often by thousands of dollars.
It explains dense federal rules in a way a teenager can understand.
Where to find the book
The download is a printable PDF. The ebook is free to read here and on Google Play Books.
The other stores set their own price.
Using it with your students
- Print as many copies as you need. The download is a printable PDF and there is no limit and no cost.
- You may share it whole. It is published under a Creative Commons licence, so you can copy and distribute the complete book free of charge, as long as it is credited and not sold or altered.
- Buy paperbacks anywhere, and use Ingram if your purchasing requires it. The paperback lists at $4.99 in the retail stores. For organizations that have to order through a wholesaler, it is in the Ingram catalog, ISBN 979-8-9967812-2-5.
- Check it yourself. Every rule points back to its official VA or DoD source, so nothing in it has to be taken on trust.
- Find it where you already look. It is catalogued in MERLOT, the California State University system’s library of free teaching materials.
Currently in the hands of the people who do this work
The Order Matters is in use across the professions who advise on this exact topic: VA School Certifying Officials, University Veterans Services, JROTC programs, and public library systems. None of it was paid for. None of it is a partnership. Advising families on these benefits is their job, and they chose this guide to do it with.
- A community college advising office in Kentucky
- A JROTC program in South Carolina
- A university Veterans affairs office in Louisiana
- A university Veterans services office in Florida
- Brevard County Public Libraries
- El Paso Public Library
Those are a few of them, and the list keeps growing.
Using it where you work? Say how it is being used, and with your permission it can appear on this list.
Through them it reaches:
- Seniors graduating high school
- Parents helping their kids plan for college
- Students already in college
- Student Veterans
- Military-connected families
Currently on shelves
- El Paso Public Library · Texas · Armijo Library
- Volusia County Public Library · Florida · Deltona Regional and New Smyrna Beach Regional
- Brevard County Libraries · Florida
Available through library and university platforms
- cloudLibrary
- ProQuest Ebook Central
- Kortext
- Ebook Library
- MERLOT
What it covers
Written for military families, 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
When my daughter needed a plan for college, I had to work out how my own VA benefits worked first. What I found was complex, with conflicting information even across official sources. So I wrote her a guide. I wanted the answers in her hands before she knew to ask the questions.
Reading regulations was not new to me. Twenty-one years in the Air Force, most of it in Air Traffic Control, and a headquarters staff job reviewing, approving, routing and publishing everything from doctrine down to local instructions.
I also completed the School Certifying Official training, the same course a school’s certifying officials take to certify GI Bill enrollment.
We Got You 1776 hosts every one of its books free on this site. The free companion app, College Tool, does the same math on your own numbers.