Cash-Flow Cliff Calculator
Model the income gap between your last military paycheck and your first civilian paycheck — month by month for 24 months post-separation.
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The full 27-month cash-flow projection is part of your FinalOut plan. It auto-fills your retired pay, VA compensation, TSP draw, and civilian income from your plan data — no double-entry needed.
What the Cash-Flow Tool Does
- ✓27-month projection starting 3 months before FADD
- ✓Month-by-month: military pay, retired pay, VA comp, TSP draw, civilian income
- ✓Cliff detection — flags months where expenses exceed income
- ✓Emergency fund runway calculator
- ✓Bar chart and month-by-month breakdown table
Cash-flow projections are for planning purposes only. Actual income depends on DFAS processing, VA claim decisions, TSP elections, and civilian employment timing. FinalOut is not affiliated with VA, DoD, DFAS, or any government agency.
What is the cash-flow cliff?
Most transitioning service members don't lose income all at once — they lose it in pieces, on different dates, from different sources. Military pay stops at your Final Active Duty Date (FADD). Retired pay, if you qualify, typically doesn't start until the month after that. VA disability compensation, if awarded, often takes months to process and start paying. Terminal leave and any final DFAS payouts land on their own separate schedule. Civilian pay — if you have a job lined up — usually starts on its own hire date, which may or may not line up with any of the above.
The "cliff" is the point where these gaps stack up and your monthly income drops below your monthly expenses, even though on paper you may eventually be fully replacing your military income. The full FinalOut cash-flow tool is designed to project that timeline month by month, using the retired pay, VA compensation, TSP draw, and civilian income figures already stored in your plan, and to flag exactly which months are at risk before they happen.
Frequently asked questions
Why does the full tool require an account?
A 27-month, multi-income-source cash-flow projection needs a lot of inputs — your FADD, retired pay estimate, VA compensation, TSP elections, and civilian income. Rather than re-entering all of that in a standalone form, the tool pulls it directly from your FinalOut plan so the numbers stay consistent across every tool you use.
Why does the projection start 3 months before FADD?
Many of the income and expense shifts that create the cash-flow cliff — final leave payouts, moving costs, benefit filing timelines — start showing up in the months leading up to separation, not just after it. Starting the projection early gives you visibility into the runway you have before your FADD, not just the drop after it.
What counts as an emergency fund "runway"?
It's an estimate of how many months your current savings would cover if a projected income gap in a given month isn't closed by another source in time. It's meant to help you decide how much to set aside before separating, not a guarantee of any specific number of months.