About Vet Debrief

Vet Debrief is a free guide to VA benefits — disability rating criteria, the claims process, federal and state benefits, plus an optional briefing tool that pulls it all together for your specific situation.

The site is built and maintained by Matt, an Army veteran who served four-plus years on active duty as a field artilleryman, including a combat deployment to Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom.

After separating from the military, he spent five years at the VA's HUD-VASH program as a housing and peer specialist. HUD-VASH is a joint program between the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the VA, providing housing vouchers and case management to veterans who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. Working that program meant sitting across from veterans every day, helping them file disability claims, appeal denials, get into VA healthcare, navigate state benefits, and put together the paperwork they needed to move into stable housing.

The information they needed wasn't hidden. It was just scattered. Some of it lived on VA.gov, some in the M21-1 procedures manual, some in state veterans' affairs offices, some in policy memos buried three clicks deep on agency websites. A veteran without a case worker had to pull all of that together themselves, often while dealing with the conditions the benefits were meant to address.

Vet Debrief is an attempt to put it in one place, written plainly, organized by what a veteran is actually trying to do — look up a rating, file a claim, find their state's benefits, get a sense of what they may be eligible for. Every page is free. There are no ads, no affiliate links, and no signup required for any of it. The optional briefing tool runs entirely in your browser; your answers never leave your device.