Time to Start Paying VA Back?

On Saturday Jan. 23, VA posted the following letter on their website. Although the letter is light on details, one thing is clear, those of us who received the “cash advance” on our GI Bill payments will soon begin paying VA back as the VA begins “recovering” the advance payments.

The letter is posted here in its entirety.

VA Letter:

WASHINGTON - The Department of Veterans Affairs is beginning the process of recovering advance payments made available during the fall 2009 semester to Veterans and service members who applied for education benefits.

“The advance payments were a huge success and helped thousands of student Veterans during the first days of the historic Post-​​9/​11 GI Bill focus on studies and not their finances,” said Keith Wilson, Director of Education Services at VA. “Now, we can get to the business of closing the books on advance payments and focus on supporting Veterans for the spring semester.”

VA will begin sending out notification letters this week explaining the repayment process.

In October VA instituted an advanced payment process for all eligible students who were currently enrolled in an institution of higher learning for the fall 2009 term to ensure that all Veterans and eligible students were able to focus on their academic studies and not be burdened with financial concerns. As part of that process, a web portal was established to allow electronic submission for advance payment. Advance payments were also made on-​​site at VA offices around the country. At that time student Veterans were told that advance payments would be deducted from future benefit payments.

In collaboration with the Department of Defense, VA will also notify active duty service members who may have mistakenly applied for the advance payment of their options for returning un-​cashed checks or reimbursing deposited funds.

VA discontinued advance payments via the website portal following the conclusion of the fall 2009 semester. VA is currently processing approximately 7,000 education benefits daily, up from an average of 2,000 at the beginning of the fall 2009 term. As of January 22 the Department has processed more than 105,000 of the approximately 132,000 spring enrollments received. Since the inception of the historic new program last year, VA has paid out more than $1.3 billion in education benefits, and opened the door to higher education to more than 183,000 Veteran students.