Land the next thing.
The months around your DD-214 are the highest-leverage of your career. File the right claims, translate the right experience, and read the right books. Built by veterans who’ve been through it.
Benefits Delivery at Discharge (BDD): file your VA claim 180–90 days before your separation date. Faster decisions, lower hassle, and you start collecting the day after your DD-214. If you wait until after you’re out, you’re looking at 4–9 months on the standard track.
Combined rating math (the VA does NOT add percentages — it stacks them) and 2026 monthly compensation amounts by rating, dependents, and SMC.
What the examiner is actually looking for, how to prepare, what to bring, and how to handle questions designed to lower your rating.
What a strong nexus letter looks like, who can write one, what language matters, and the IMOs that have actually moved ratings.
Higher-Level Review, Supplemental Claim, and Board Appeal — when each applies, expected timelines, and the evidence that wins.
Presumptive conditions for burn pit exposure, Camp Lejeune, Agent Orange, and Gulf War. Who qualifies, what to file, and the deadlines.
Stressor letters, MST claims, secondary conditions, and the difference between an in-service and post-service diagnosis on your rating.
BCMR vs DRB, when to use each, the standards of review, and the cases where a "bad paper" discharge can become Honorable.
Chapter discharge mechanics, voluntary vs administrative, hardship, conscientious objector, and what shows on your DD-214.
Post-9/11 vs Montgomery, Yellow Ribbon math, transferring to dependents, and the in-state/out-of-state tuition trap.
Turn MOS jargon into civilian language hiring managers actually understand. With salary anchors and skill-stack mapping.
The launch sequence in the order that costs least — state fee waivers first, then formation, the free EIN, free SAM registration, banking, and SDVOSB certification. Which steps are free, and which upsells to refuse.
All 50 states plus DC, every benefit cited to the statute it came from. Filing fee waivers, bid preferences from 3 bonus points to 15%, and the eleven states where we checked the procurement code and proved there is nothing — because a confirmed "no" saves you a week.
You will be pitched one during transition, probably with the word veteran-friendly attached. The VetFran discount applies to the initial franchise fee, not your total investment — plus the four FDD items that decide it, and why separation pay is the wrong money.
Free, run by the SBA rather than the VA since 2023, and no legal processing deadline exists — the 90-day figure everyone repeats is a misread of the reapply-after-denial rule. Every claim cited to 13 CFR part 128.
The honest map of the military-to-civilian jump — identity whiplash, resume translation, money landmines — from people who made it.
PTSD, moral injury, and the road home — the clinical classics and the memoirs that make the invisible legible. The serious shelf.
MST claims, gender-specific care at the VA, conditions undercoded for women, and the providers who actually understand.