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The Better Veteran
Maximize Your Benefits. Optimize Your Life.
May 14, 2026
A few weeks ago I was on a Reddit thread where a vet asked, "Can I keep my VA disability if I move to Spain?"
12 replies. 12 different answers. Half of them confidently wrong ranging from "the VA stops paying you the second you cross the border" (false) to "you have to renounce your citizenship to retire abroad" (extremely false).
Every "expat retirement" calculator out there, Numbeo, Nomad List, Expatistan, completely ignores that the average disabled veteran is sitting on $4,000–9,000/mo of fully portable, tax-free, paid-the-same-everywhere USD income. None of those tools were built for our income picture.
So I built one that was.
You can spend your weekend planning your escape. 47 countries (more being added if you’d like to see a specific one) + all US territories. To LARP as an expat, but keeping all the benefits of staying in the US.
Introducing the Veteran Freedom Index
I named it the Veteran Freedom Index because this is where your money can (most times) take you the furthest. Whoever said “money can’t buy happiness” has never had an Aperol Spritz on the Amalfi Coast where they spend their time living in a seaside apartment for 900 euro a month, soaking up the Mediterranean sun, all while stacking their money.
You plug in your VA rating (it auto-calculates your comp, including SMC-S/L/M/N/O/R/T base levels with the correct spouse and child dependent additions, plus SMC-K stacking up to 4 awards on top), add military retirement, FERS, Social Security, TSP/IRA withdrawals, GI Bill foreign-school MHA, and VR&E (Chapter 31) subsistence if any apply. There's also a toggle for your spouse's portable income, flip it on and the tool calculates against your full household total instead of just yours. The tool ranks 47 countries plus all 5 U.S. territories — 52 destinations total — by how far your stacked income actually stretches.
Three city tiers per country, because Madrid and Valencia are not the same financial reality just as New York City and Little Rock, Arkansas are not the same. Visa pathways. Citizenship timelines. VA Foreign Medical Program coverage. Local tax treatment. Approved foreign schools for the GI Bill. Yellow Ribbon participants. 10- and 20-year cumulative projections. Side-by-side comparison against nine U.S. baseline cities (San Diego, Norfolk, San Antonio, Tampa, Phoenix, Las Vegas, DC, NYC, Honolulu).
Each country will have its own list of costs, healthcare breakdowns, Visa pathways, how you can expect taxes to work, how many VA-approved schools there are, and how much you get to keep based on your / your household income.
Here's the Arbitrage Nobody's Running the Numbers On
A 100% P&T veteran with a spouse pulls $4,158.17/month in VA disability at 2026 rates. Tax-free. Paid in nearly every country at the same rate.
In San Diego that pays rent on a one-bedroom. Maybe.
In Lisbon, the same $4,158 puts you in the top 10% of earners in the country. In Mexico City you're top 5%. In Manila, top 5%. In Buenos Aires, top 3% (with a currency-volatility asterisk the tool flags).
Nobody runs these numbers because the mainstream cost-of-living tools don't know what VA disability is, the "retire abroad" content is written for civilians, and most veterans assume they'd lose benefits if they moved abroad. They don't.
What the Tool Actually Does
Once you plug in your income and a few preferences (region, climate, terrain, healthcare, English prevalence, proximity to the U.S.), it surfaces:
Where you'd actually stand financially — top X% of earners per country, monthly surplus after typical living costs, an ROI multiple
Three city tiers per country — Madrid is 40–55% more expensive than Santiago de Compostela. Country averages mislead.
Visa pathways + citizenship timelines — passive-income visas (Portugal D7, Mexico Temporary Resident), retirement visas (Philippines SRRV, Panama Pensionado), student visas tied to GI Bill schools; plus residency-to-citizenship years for each
VA Foreign Medical Program coverage + which countries have actual VA clinics (spoiler: only the Philippines, outside U.S. territories)
VA-approved foreign schools per country — pulled from WEAMS — including Yellow Ribbon participants
Local tax treatment in 5 buckets, with country-specific program notes
Currency volatility flags for Argentina and Turkey
Compare three countries and/or territories. See how they stack up against a US city, each other, the pathways to citizenship/residency, healthcare, and more.
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Yellow Ribbon at Foreign Schools: Almost Nobody Knows This Exists
The Post-9/11 GI Bill caps foreign-school tuition at $30,908.34/year for 2026–27. Not enough for a top-tier MBA or most premium grad programs. The Yellow Ribbon Program closes that gap. Participating schools contribute additional tuition above the cap, and the VA matches it dollar-for-dollar. The tool flags every foreign-school participant with a ⭐ tag:
The American University of Paris: $11,742/student/yr, ~100 students/yr, all degree levels including undergraduate. An AUP undergrad has up to ~$54,000/yr of tuition fully covered.
University of Sydney — uncapped contribution, 1,000+ students/yr, all degree levels: The school commits to cover any tuition amount above the GI Bill cap. The gold standard.
IESE Business School (Barcelona): $14,677.50/student/yr, MBA, 6 students/yr
Ponce Health Sciences University (Puerto Rico): $15,000/student/yr, doctoral level
University of Sydney is probably the best because it provides uncapped Yellow Ribbon
The U.S. Territories Path Most Veterans Skip
The tool covers all 5 U.S. territories: Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa. And as their own region group the math is different from foreign countries in three important ways:
GI Bill MHA is location-based BAH, not the flat $2,522 foreign rate. Typically $1,800–2,600/mo in PR, $2,200–2,800/mo in Guam. Higher than the foreign flat rate in many cases.
VA healthcare is the full system — VA hospitals and clinics in PR, USVI, Guam, and CNMI. Not the Foreign Medical Program. You stay inside the VA system entirely.
No visa. No foreign tax filing. No surrendering passport access. It's U.S. soil. You stay U.S. for tax, healthcare, mail, and benefits — but with cost of living that's often 30–50% lower than mainland metros.
Honolulu, Pearl Harbor, and military hubs make Hawaii an obvious vet destination. But Guam and Puerto Rico are quietly the same arbitrage with a fraction of the rent.
"Can I Keep My VA Pay Abroad?" — The Short Answer
Yes. Almost certainly.
VA disability is paid to eligible veterans in nearly every country at the same rate. Direct deposit works in most countries via the Fed's International Direct Deposit program. The only excluded countries are a small Treasury-restricted list (currently Cuba and North Korea, but I sincerely hope you aren’t planning a move to either).
Living abroad does not affect your rating or your CHAMPVA coverage. CHAMPVA actually pays overseas. Your dependents pay out of pocket and file VA Form 10-7959a for reimbursement; same deductibles, same cost shares, USD payments. Although, in most countries healthcare is so affordable, it might be worth it to pay the 50-150 bucks a month for private healthcare just to avoid the headache of trying to get the government to pay you back.
What changes when you go abroad: healthcare shifts to the Foreign Medical Program for service-connected conditions, plus inexpensive local private insurance (~$50–150/mo in the tool's target countries). U.S. still taxes worldwide income, but VA disability is federally tax-free and most tax treaties protect it locally too. Voting stays absentee through FVAP.
That's it. The rest is just figuring out which country fits.
A Few of My Favorite Things About the Build
I'm going to drop a few specific features that I geeked out on while building this:
The side-by-side comparison. Pick up to 4 destinations and compare them against an optional U.S. baseline city (San Diego, Norfolk, San Antonio, Tampa, Phoenix, Las Vegas, DC, NYC, Honolulu). The "what would I be leaving behind?" answer is different if you're leaving Brooklyn vs. leaving San Antonio.
The 10/20-year projections. The most common GI Bill question is "yeah but the benefit runs out, then what?" The tool separates the temporary 36-month GI Bill boost from the base sustainable surplus, so you see "what the GI Bill years are worth" and "what life looks like once it disappears."
The currency volatility flag. Argentina is the most generous-looking country by raw surplus, but the peso has lost 99% of its value against the dollar in the last 30 years. Argentina and Turkey both get a red flag with a tooltip explaining the long-term math is unreliable.
The tax buckets. Five categories: territorial (Panama, Costa Rica, DR, Belize, Paraguay, Georgia, Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Cambodia, Seychelles), worldwide-with-program (Greece's 7% flat tax on foreign pensions for 15 years, Italy's Impatriati, Spain's Beckham Law, Cyprus non-dom, Portugal IFICI, Ireland non-dom), worldwide-standard (Germany, France, Australia), no-income-tax (UAE), and U.S. domestic (the territories).
The transparent WEAMS school counts. The Philippines has 145 VA-approved foreign-study schools. Puerto Rico has 118. Germany has 70. We can't list all of them in the tool without going stale, so each card honestly says "Showing X of Y · Browse the full list on VA.gov →" with a deep-link to the filtered results.
The household-income toggle. Flip it on and the tool sums spouse's combined portable income and switches the whole interface from "your" to "your household's."
What This Tool Won't Tell You
I want to be upfront about the limitations.
It doesn't include:
Exact local tax math: the tool buckets countries into tax regimes but doesn't model your specific tax residency situation, your specific tax treaty, or what happens when you remit income vs. leave it in the U.S. A dedicated veteran-expat tax guide is on the roadmap. For now: your best, most secure way of doing this is to hire a cross-border tax attorney before you move.
Non-resident mortgage availability per country: yes, your VA disability and retirement income count for mortgage qualification in Portugal, Spain, and Mexico (via cross-border lenders like MoXi and Intercam). No, it's not 0% down, expect 30–50% down, higher rates than locals, and 12–24 months of bank-statement documentation. A few markets (Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia) restrict foreign property ownership more heavily and skew cash-only. Adding this as a per-country tag is on the list.
Hiring market for working-age veterans: the tool is built around portable retirement-style income. If you plan to work abroad on top of that, every country has different work visa rules and labor market access.
Real-time currency moves: the Numbeo cost-of-living data is a quarterly snapshot. Argentina and Turkey will move materially between refreshes.
The intangibles: family proximity, cultural fit, language commitment, kids' school transitions, your spouse's tolerance for the entire idea. The tool gives you the math. You decide whether the math is the deciding factor.
What this tool does tell you is the structured, benefits-optimized, honestly-priced version of the geo-arbitrage decision. Everything else is your call.
Run Your Numbers
Plug in your VA rating, your retirement, your other income streams, and a few preferences. It takes about 60 seconds.
When you're done: screenshot it. Email it to yourself (there's a button for that). Share it with the spouse who keeps saying "we'll talk about retirement when we're closer to retirement."
What country did the tool say was your best fit? Did the result surprise you? If a country you wanted to see is missing, or a number doesn't match what you know to be true — hit reply and tell me. The tool already had 5 user-driven fixes shipped in the first 24 hours after launch (CHAMPVA overseas coverage, SMC stacking math, SMC dependent additions, dual-income households, per-country tax bucketing), and the feedback loop is still wide open.
The world is bigger than the system told you it was. This is the map.
Talk soon,
Zak
If you’d like to support the mission of The Better Veteran, you can do so here. If anything I’ve ever shared has opened your eyes on how to take advantage of your benefits, or saved you money, and you feel so inclined to show support. You can do so here:
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Stay informed. Stay empowered. -- The Better Veteran Team
This newsletter is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal, financial, medical, immigration, or tax advice. Cost-of-living, visa, citizenship, tax, and healthcare rules vary by country and change frequently. Cost-of-living data is sourced from Numbeo's quarterly snapshots and may shift between refreshes. Always verify current rules with the relevant embassy, a cross-border tax attorney, an immigration attorney for your target country, and the VA before relocating. VA benefit eligibility is governed by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and may change. The Better Veteran is not affiliated with the VA or any federal agency.
