Calculators for US military retirees living overseas
The numbers most retirement budgets get wrong when you leave the country: what the GI Bill pays at a foreign school, what TRICARE really costs a retiree abroad, and whether the plan survives a lower VA rating.
Why these four
Retiring abroad is mostly the same math as retiring stateside, with three exceptions that nobody puts in one place. Retiree TRICARE overseas is not free and no hospital will bill it for you. The GI Bill foreign-school housing allowance is generous but halves if you are exclusively online. And your VA rating, which may not be final when you plan the move, swings the monthly number by more than a thousand dollars. These tools exist to make those three visible before you sign a lease.
The Military Retirement Overseas Budget Planner is an Excel workbook that runs retired pay, VA compensation, GI Bill, debts and local living costs at three VA ratings side by side, with a 36-month projection where debts fall off on schedule, the TRICARE Overseas estimator, and a loan-payoff calculator. No macros. Works in Excel and Google Sheets.
Get the workbook, $19Where the numbers come from
- VA compensation: 2025 published table with the 2026 COLA applied. va.gov
- GI Bill foreign-school MHA: AY 2026-27 flat rate. va.gov
- TRICARE Select Overseas retiree costs: 2026. tricare.mil