Editorial Policy

Rank and Pay shows what the published pay tables, VA rate tables, fitness scoring tables and benefit rules say, and does the arithmetic. People plan moves, training, claims and retirements around numbers like these, so the rules for what gets published are strict. This page sets them out, and says what happens when something is wrong.

Who is responsible

Rank and Pay is an independent site run by an individual based in the United States. The site is published under its own name, Rank and Pay, which is the author of every tool and guide. It is not run by an attorney, an accredited VA representative, a tax professional, a financial counselor or a medical professional, and it claims no military service, rank or credentials. So the site stays within a clear lane: what the agencies’ own tables and rules say, and the arithmetic. There are no guest posts and no paid contributors.

What the site covers, and what it doesn’t

Covered: basic pay, allowances and special pays; VA disability math, rates and back pay arithmetic; the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps fitness tests and body-composition rules; military retirement and the TSP; PCS allowances; GI Bill® rates — all from primary sources.
Not covered: legal, tax, financial, medical or benefits advice for your situation; predictions of the rating VA will give you or whether a claim will succeed; which retirement option or TSP fund to choose; individual pay problems or records.
Each guide answers one concrete question. We don’t publish several pages that say the same thing under different keywords, and we don’t generate pages for every city, grade or job code.
Examples come from several regions, and the site never writes as if every reader lived in one state. Rules that differ by state are published only from confirmed data for all 50 states and DC.

How data is sourced, dated and versioned

Every rate, table cell and rule a tool uses comes from the agency that publishes it — DFAS, the Defense Travel Management Office, VA, the military services, the TSP, the IRS, or the law itself (the U.S. Code, the Code of Federal Regulations, the Federal Register) — and is recorded with the address of that page or document, the version of the table, the date printed on it and the date it was read.
Official tables are used exactly as published: a cell is the cell, and a fitness score is the highest row you reached — never an in-between value. Only amounts the tools compute are rounded, once, to the cent.
Rates are stored with the dates they take effect, so a tool uses the rate in force on the date that matters — including changes announced for a later date. A date the data does not cover shows “Not modeled for this date”, never an old rate.
The original files are kept unchanged next to the data, with their SHA-256 checksums, and the data is rebuilt from them; a changed source file is detected, not guessed.
Every result shows “as of” and “verified” dates. Every source is re-verified before any data update. The site’s build checks each dataset’s verified date every time it runs: it warns once a dataset is 35 days past that date and refuses to publish at 62 days, and it also refuses when a dataset has run past the period it covers with no successor. Each dataset records when its next table is expected (VA rates around December 1, BAH in mid-December, the January pay table); from that day the build warns until the new table has been read.
When a rule can’t be confirmed on a primary source, the tool says “Not modeled” with the reason and the date checked; where a confirmed rule has two readings that change the answer, it shows a range and names the question. We don’t fill gaps with guesses, projections or figures from other calculators or forums. Pending changes (a pay raise not yet signed, VA rates not yet published) are described as pending, never computed.

The change log

The change log lists each confirmed change to a number or rule the tools use: the date it takes effect (and the date it was announced, when different), what changed in plain words with the old and new values, the tools it affects, a link to the agency’s own page with that page’s date, and the date we verified it. Upcoming changes are listed with the date they take effect.

A change is published only when a primary source confirms both the new value and its date. Changes reported elsewhere but not confirmed are kept out of the log and out of the tools until they are. A value in the data never changes without a matching row in the log. If a row turns out to be wrong, it is corrected on the row with a dated note.

How guides are sourced

Primary sources first: DFAS, the Defense Travel Management Office, the DoD Financial Management Regulation, VA, the Electronic Code of Federal Regulations, the U.S. Code, the Federal Register, the services’ own directives, instructions and scoring tables, the TSP, the IRS, the Social Security Administration and the Congressional Research Service.
Every guide lists its sources at the end with the date each one was read and, for tables and documents, the version. Forums, law-firm or claims-coaching blogs, competitors, AI summaries and other calculators are not used as evidence.
A claim that can’t be traced to a source isn’t published as fact. Guides report what the sources say and attribute it; they don’t claim service experience, hands-on testing, credentials, anecdotes or results.
Every number in a worked example is computed with the same rules the tools use, and each guide goes through a separate review pass that recomputes the numbers and traces every claim to its source.
Figures in guides are drawn to scale from those same rules when the site is built: a length on the page is the amount, the score or the share it stands for. Every number a figure prints also appears in the guide’s text, and the build stops if one doesn’t. A figure that shows an agency’s own illustration or a ceiling set by law (not a computation) says so in its caption.
Guides never predict outcomes: they don’t tell readers what rating VA will give, whether a claim will succeed, which retirement option to choose or whether they qualify for a benefit. They show how the rule works and name who decides.

Use of AI tools

Guides are researched and drafted with AI writing tools that work to the rules on this page. Before a guide is published, a separate review pass checks every factual statement against its cited source and recomputes every worked example; a statement that cannot be confirmed in a source is corrected or removed. Sources are never invented: each one listed was opened and read during that process, on the date shown.

Dates and updates

Each guide shows the date it was first published and the date it was last updated. The updated date changes only when the content changes in substance — including every data change that alters a number in the guide — not for cosmetic edits.

Corrections

If you find an error, email hello@rankandpay.com with the page address and, if possible, a source. We check every report. When a factual error is confirmed, we fix it and add a dated “Correction” note on the page that says what changed; a corrected change-log row carries its own dated note. Spelling and formatting fixes are made without a note.

Tools

The tools follow the tables, rules and assumptions stated on each page, and their arithmetic is covered by automated tests built from the agencies’ own worked examples and from every row of the published tables. If a tool produces something wrong, it is fixed first and explained second. Please report problems through the contact page.

No claims help, school leads or lender referrals

The site never offers or refers readers to paid help with VA claims, “claim reviews” or consultants. VA pages point only to VA’s own pages for finding an accredited representative, where help from Veterans Service Organizations is free.
The site never collects leads for schools, ranks schools or takes payment tied to enrollment, and never refers readers to lenders, mortgages or high-interest credit.
Nothing on the site asks for contact details in exchange for a result.

Advertising is separate from content

Ads are served by Google AdSense. Each ad position is labeled “Advertisements”, sits in its own box, and is never placed inside a tool, a result, a table or the middle of a sentence, and never next to the VA free-help box.
Advertisers have no say in what we write, and we don’t know in advance which ads Google will show. An ad on a page is not a recommendation. Ads aren’t running yet. Claims-service and school-recruiting advertisers, and their categories where AdSense offers them, will be blocked with AdSense’s blocking controls once AdSense approves the site.
Guides never ask readers to click ads.

How gear is chosen

Gear lists name quality training equipment for the fitness-test events — the deadlift, sled and carry, rowing, pull-ups and running — by brand and exact model, with facts taken from the maker’s own product page and the date it was read. An item is listed because it fits the event, not because of its commission. We don’t claim to have tried an item, we don’t publish ratings and we don’t show prices. No uniforms, insignia, service-branded goods or supplements are ever listed. Gear appears only on the fitness tool pages and the gear page. Neither the Department of Defense nor any military service endorses these products, this list or this site.

Independence and the look of the site

Rank and Pay is a private, independent website. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by the Department of Defense (also called the Department of War), the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, Space Force, Coast Guard, the Department of Veterans Affairs, DFAS, DTMO or any other government agency. Official rates and decisions come only from those agencies.

Agencies and services are named in plain text, only to say whose rule or table a number comes from. Pay grades are written as text (“E-5”). The site uses no seal, emblem, insignia, flag, medal, badge, uniform, service logo or service color, imitates no government website or form, and never describes itself as official, certified or approved.