Merry Christmas and welcome back to the podcast. I hope yo’ve a had a bit of a break to spend time with the ones you love. Here’s a special shout out to our military and civil servants that are spending another holiday far from home and family. We love you and we’re thinking of you. Thanks for being there for us.

Today’s podcast is a short one. It’s a time for rest, fun, and joy. So believe it or not today’s podcast is on how our military service members can change their income tax withholding and change your Servicemen's Group Life Insurance (SGLI).

Whaaat? REALLY? Why? Who wants to think about this at Christmas. Especially if you’ve been in awhile you know almost any personnel action you have to do that’s related to your pay is a pain, can go bad fast, involves who knows what paperwork and chasing done the right person to hand it to.

So this Christmas, my gift to you is the ‘EASY” button for changing your SGLI and W4 withholding. It’s the Christmas miracle of military paperwork. If you are getting a big refund each year or a nasty tax surprise at filing time, you can instruct your employer to change your withholding amounts by filling out a new W4. I did an entire episode on the W4 Withholding form in Episode #40 Withholding. So refer back to that to see what information you need to update your withholding. And I’ll put a link in the show notes to the IRS Form W4 too. https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/fw4.pdf

For our serving and retired military and DoD civilians it is, no kidding, easy. You log into your MyPay account at https://mypay.dfas.mil/#/. The information you input directly on the MyPay website is the same as the W-4 form. On MyPay look for the Pay Changes category and under that you can chose federal withholding or state withholding. Fill in the blanks online and its all done online in a few minutes.

The other Christmas miracle easy task is changing your SGLi. Our serving military now can make changes to your SGLI online using the the SGLI On-Line Enrollment System (SOES). Go to MilConnect (link again in show notes) https://milconnect.dmdc.osd.mil/milconnect/

On the MilConnect main home page you’ll find front and center a “I want to…” section and Manage my SGLI is an easy to see choice. Once you click that button, you’ll be prompted to sign in with your DS login, your CAC card, or your DFAS myPay credentials. Your choice. You’ll se a ‘If you have had a life event” choice. If you’ve gotten married since you joined the military, or divorced, had children, or a previous beneficiary has passed, now is a good time to relook how much coverage you have and who you have listed as beneficiaries. You can change your amount of coverage and beneficiaries all on-line, oh so easy.

And that’s it for today! If your end of year to-do list or New year’s resolution includes finally updating your income tax withholding or SGLI coverage. Hop on it. So quick and easy. A military Christmas miracle.