Still no GI Bill

I don't mean to harp on the same thing over and over again. But, I've been in school for almost a month now and the GI bill still hasn't been processed by the VA. The first part of this blame goes to my school; they were the ones who held on to the paperwork for 3 weeks after school started before starting to process the paperwork. The excuse I got was that the new system our school put into place is hard to understand - no disagreement here - 3Ls have pretty much conspired to never use STANLEY.

The second problem, though, is with the VA. I swear the program is designed to make it next to impossible to use. The GI Bill is set up to reimburse your education expenses each month, which means that in order to get the GI Bill benefits, you have to be able to afford to enroll in school in the first place (i.e. pay tuition). Then, after each month, you confirm the enrollment and get paid for the previous month (provided the school gets the paperwork in and the VA processes it), so you need to have been able to afford your living expenses for school before you get compensated as well. If you can meet these hurdles for as long as it takes for the school and the VA to get their respective acts straight, then you get paid between 7 and 10 days after you've confirmed your enrollment.

For many people, this might be somewhat easier, but the amount we spend on daycare is pretty close to the amount we get paid for the GI Bill, and without that money, we end up hurting a lot more than we should.

Now, the school does have options for emergencies similar to this. There is an emergency loan program set up in the school. Admittedly, I know very little about this program, but, since everything the school does is geared towards making money, I'm fairly confident in the assumption that the school would charge me some sort of fee for taking out this emergency loan (i.e. I would have to pay back more than I received). I'm not going to do this. I'm not willing to pay the school money to be able to tide myself over for the time I'm not getting paid the money I'm owed due to the school's negligence in either training their staff or processing the necessary work to ensure its students are able to afford the costs of attending class.

I hate my car.


UPDATE

I called the GI Bill yesterday and to my surprise, they had processed the paperwork finally. I am disliking the VA less today.