VA Compensation Calculator — Update 1.27.1

Version 1.27.1 of the VA Compensation Calculator is now available on the App Store. It brings Survivor Benefits to estimate what VA would pay your spouse and children as your survivors, an Apple Watch app for your rating, your pay and the Symptom Log, and a Getting Started video for anyone new to the app.

Survivor Benefits

Dependency and Indemnity Compensation (DIC) is the tax-free monthly payment VA makes to a veteran’s surviving spouse and children. Survivor Benefits estimates it two ways.

For your family starts from the dependents in My Profile and shows what your spouse and children could receive, line by line: your spouse’s basic rate, each child, and the transitional benefit, paid in DIC’s first 2 years while a child is under 18. For a spouse and two children under 18, that’s $2,900.36 a month at 2026 rates, and $2,541.36 after the first 2 years.

It also shows when each of VA’s rules would apply:

• A service-connected death, at any time: a service-connected condition caused the death or contributed to it. For a spouse, VA’s marriage rule applies too: married within 15 years after the service the condition began or got worse in, married at least a year, or a child together (38 CFR 3.54(c)).
• Almost any cause of death, after 10 years rated 100% or TDIU without a break, as long as the rating continues: 5 years if you’ve been rated that way since the day you left active duty, or 1 year as a former prisoner of war. Any cause counts unless it came from your own willful misconduct, and a spouse needs a year of marriage before the death, or a child together (38 U.S.C. 1318).
• The 8-year provision, which pays a spouse $360.85 more a month (2026 rates) when you’ve been rated 100% or TDIU without a break, and married, for the 8 years before the death.

If you’re rated 100% or TDIU, add the month that rating began and the month you married, and the last two show the month each would start to apply. A temporary 100% that ended, or a cut to a lower rating, starts the count over.

For a survivor is an estimate from a survivor’s own answers: a surviving spouse or children only, Aid and Attendance or housebound, the children, and whether DIC is in its first 2 years. It lists VA’s rules for who qualifies and links to the application on VA.gov.

It’s an estimate, and it never says anyone qualifies: VA decides that, and whether a death was service-connected. It doesn’t cover DIC for parents, which depends on their income, or deaths before 1993. The rates come from VA’s own table, and like the pay tables, a new year’s arrives without an app update. The dates you add stay on your device. You’ll find it in Calculators & References → Survivor Benefits, and in My Profile under Dependents.

Apple Watch

The app now comes with an Apple Watch app, for watchOS 10 or later. If it isn’t on your watch yet, open the Watch app on your iPhone and install VA Compensation.

• Your rating and pay: your rating, monthly pay and next pay date on your wrist, and on your watch face.
• Claim Tracker: your upcoming exams, hearings and deadlines, and how many days away each one is.
• Symptom Log: pick a condition and start an episode the moment it begins, or set when it started if you’re late. When it’s over, tap End and say how bad it was, whether a migraine made you stop and lie down, and any care you needed. It goes to the Symptom Log on your iPhone, which keeps the record. VA rates migraines on how often they come, how long they last and whether they’re prostrating, so logging each one as it happens helps.
• Log a migraine: say “Log a migraine in VA Compensation” to Siri on your watch, and it starts timing one without opening the app. On an Apple Watch Ultra, you can put it on the Action button with the Shortcuts app.

With App Lock on, the watch and your watch face show a lock instead of your numbers, and the watch face never shows a disability’s name or an event’s title. The watch never talks to my server, only to your iPhone. The privacy policy has the details.

A Getting Started video

New to the app, or helping a veteran with it? The Getting Started video is an 8-minute tour: adding your ratings, seeing your pay, finding what you may be able to claim, and every tool in the app. The app now links to it from the welcome screen and from Help. It plays on my website, and nothing loads from YouTube until you press play.

More jobs in Military Job Lookup

On November 5, Military Job Lookup got about 1,700 more job codes, most of them from the 1950s through the 1990s: the Air Force’s Air Police, Vietnam-era Marine Corps MOSs, the Army’s jobs of the 1970s and 1980s, Navy limited duty and warrant officer designators, and more. That’s 5,159 job codes in all. Like the rest of its lists, they arrived without an app update, so they’re already in your app. If yours still isn’t there, tap Tell me about a missing job and send me the code, the title and when you had it.

As always: your VA information stays on your devices and under your control. If something’s off or you have an idea, tap ? → Contact Me and tell me.