About

Built by a veteran.
For veterans.

Why this tool exists, how it works, and what it can't do.

The Story

I built the tool I wished existed.

Hey there. My name is Mark and I'm a former Naval Aviator and veteran living in California. Some people daydream about love, food, or travel. Not me – I daydream about leaving California.

A few years ago I sat down and actually ran the numbers — what my benefits and any future retirement pay would look like net of state taxes, property taxes, and cost of living, compared to other states. What I found was that the information existed — scattered across state tax authority websites, the IRS, VA.gov, DFAS, and military finance forums — but nobody had pulled it together into a single place where you could enter your situation and see how states actually compared for you. So I built that.

The irony isn't lost on me. I built a tool specifically designed to help veterans make smart financial decisions about where to live — and I live in California. Financially speaking, it's an exceptionally dumb place to be. I'm still in California — for now. But I know exactly what it's costing me. That's what this tool gives you: clarity.

I chose the North Star as the theme for this project. To me, that symbolizes everything to which my life is oriented. My personal North Star is my six-year-old daughter, Nora — the sole reason I'm still in California. So I completely understand that finance may be just one small factor in deciding where to live. I encourage you to discover what your North Star is. Maybe it's being near good schools for your kids, a dream job, the mountains, relatives, or just money. Whatever it is, I hope this tool helps guide you financially as you seek it out.

And who knows? Maybe someday I'll get the hell out of here. Will keep you posted.

The Difference

Most tools give you one answer.
Veteran NorthStar gives you the whole picture.

A retirement calculator tells you your pension. A cost of living index tells you which states are cheaper. A VA disability lookup tells you your compensation rate. Tax calculators can estimate your taxes. They're all useful, but they exist separately — and that's a problem because they're highly interconnected.

That's the problem Veteran NorthStar was built to solve. Your actual financial picture as a veteran isn't any one of those things in isolation. It's all of them at once — your retirement pay net of federal and state taxes, your VA compensation, your property tax exemption, your housing costs, your cashflow over a 20-year horizon — calculated together, for your specific profile, across all 50 states simultaneously. It's the most customizable and integrated tool available, and it's free.

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How the calculations work

What's under the hood

Every number in Veteran NorthStar is derived from publicly available sources — no black boxes, no proprietary scoring. Here's what goes into it:

  • Federal taxes — 2025 IRS tax brackets, standard deductions, and long-term capital gains thresholds. The tool models your federal tax liability first, then layers state taxes on top.
  • State income taxes — Each state's current rates, brackets, and military-specific exemptions. This is where the complexity lives: some states fully exempt military retirement pay, some partially exempt it based on age or income, and some tax it like any other income. We model all of it.
  • VA disability compensation — 2025 VA rate tables. Your compensation is always 100% non-taxable at both the federal and state level, in every state — that never changes.
  • Property tax exemptions — State-level veteran exemptions, indexed to disability rating and P&T status. These vary enormously: Florida and Texas offer full exemptions at 100% P&T; most states offer partial reductions.
  • Military retirement pay — Calculated using the High-3 formula (2.5% × years of service × average of highest 36 months of base pay), capped at 75%.
  • Housing costs — State median home prices and rent, sourced from publicly available market data. VA loan modeling assumes $0 down with no PMI.

The tool is updated periodically to reflect legislative changes, VA rate adjustments, and IRS inflation adjustments. Tax law changes frequently — particularly state-level military exemptions, which have been expanding rapidly in recent years.

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What this tool doesn't do

Honest limitations — read before making big decisions

Veteran NorthStar is a comparison and estimation tool, not a tax calculator or financial advisor. There are real limits to what it can tell you:

  • We're only as good as the inputs you provide. The tool can produce results with just a few data points, but the more complete your profile, the more accurate your results. A partial profile gives you a useful directional picture — not a precise one. Things like side income, rental properties, stock sales, and a spouse's W-2 all affect your actual tax liability, and the tool can only account for what you tell it.
  • We use current law, not future law. State tax treatment of military benefits has been changing fast — several states have added or expanded exemptions in the past few years. We track these, but a legislative session could change things before the next update.
  • Property tax estimates are approximations. Homestead rules and assessed value calculations vary within states. The numbers give you directional accuracy, not line-item precision.
  • We don't model everything that makes a place livable. Healthcare access, proximity to bases and VA facilities, school quality, weather, cost of food and utilities — these matter enormously and aren't in the numbers.

Use this tool to narrow your list and understand the financial landscape. Then talk to real people — a VSO, a tax professional, and ideally veterans who actually live in the states you're considering.

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Get real help — for free

Organizations that exist specifically to help you

For decisions involving real money — a major move, filing a VA claim, making sense of your tax situation — talk to someone who can look at your full picture. These organizations provide free, accredited assistance to veterans:

DAV (Disabled American Veterans)
Free claims assistance and benefits counseling for disabled veterans
VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars)
Service officers in every state, free VA claims help
MOAA
Financial and legal resources for military officers and families
American Legion
Posts in every state with accredited claims representatives

For tax-specific questions, look for a CPA or enrolled agent with military client experience. The Military OneSource program also provides free financial counseling to veterans within 180 days of separation.

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Your data never goes anywhere

Everything you enter into Veteran NorthStar stays on your device. There's no account, no server, no database receiving your information. Your profile is saved in your browser's local storage — the same way a website remembers your preferences. We don't collect it, we don't sell it, and we have no way to access it even if we wanted to. This isn't a privacy policy written by lawyers. It's just how the tool is built.

Ready to run your numbers?

Build your profile in about 3 minutes and unlock state comparisons, retirement projections, benefit calculations, and cashflow planning — all in one place.

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