How SGLI works, from enrollment to separation.

Most service members never signed a life insurance application. SGLI signed it for them. Here’s what you actually have, and the one date that matters.

SGLI (Servicemembers’ Group Life Insurance) is low-cost group term life insurance for service members. Eligible members are enrolled automatically at the maximum $500,000, the premium is 5 cents per $1,000 of coverage plus $1 for traumatic injury protection, $26 a month at the top level, and it comes out of base pay. Coverage ends 120 days after you leave the military.

What SGLI is

SGLI is group term life insurance, which means one master policy covers the whole force and each member holds a share of it. Term means it pays a death benefit while it’s in force and builds no cash value. The program is run through the VA and administered day to day by the Office of Servicemembers’ Group Life Insurance, which operates through Prudential. That’s why Prudential’s name shows up on paperwork; our guide to Prudential and VGLI untangles who does what.

Two design choices make SGLI different from anything on the civilian market. First, enrollment is automatic: qualify and you’re covered at the maximum, no application, no medical exam. Second, everyone pays the same rate. A 19-year-old private and a 50-year-old colonel with a heart condition pay the identical premium per $1,000. Group pricing across millions of mostly young, healthy members is what makes that math work.

Who is covered automatically

Per va.gov, you’re eligible for full-time SGLI coverage if any of these describes you:

• Active-duty member of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Space Force, Marines, or Coast Guard
• Commissioned member of NOAA or the U.S. Public Health Service
• Cadet or midshipman at a U.S. military academy
• Member, cadet, or midshipman of ROTC engaged in authorized training and practice cruises
• Member of the Ready Reserve or National Guard, assigned to a unit and scheduled for at least 12 periods of inactive training per year
• Volunteer in an Individual Ready Reserve mobilization category

If you’re on that list, coverage started without you lifting a finger, at the full $500,000. You can lower it, or decline it entirely, but the default is maximum protection. For most members with a family, the default is also the right answer.

Coverage amounts and what SGLI costs

SGLI comes in $50,000 increments up to a top limit of $500,000 (va.gov). The current basic premium rate is 5 cents per $1,000 of coverage per month, and every member’s premium includes an extra $1 per month for Traumatic Injury Protection (TSGLI), which pays a separate benefit if you survive a serious traumatic injury.

In plain terms: full coverage costs $26 a month, $25 for the insurance plus the $1 TSGLI charge, deducted from base pay before you ever see it. Half coverage, $250,000, runs $13.50. There’s no age band, no tobacco class, no rating for a deployment order. Civilian term insurance for a healthy 30-year-old can get close to that price; for an older member or one with health history, nothing on the open market touches it.

Managing coverage in SOES

Everything about your SGLI runs through the SGLI Online Enrollment System (SOES), which you reach by logging in to milConnect. That’s where you see your coverage amount, reduce or decline it, restore it, and, most important, name your beneficiaries.

The beneficiary line deserves its own sentence. SGLI pays the person named in SOES, full stop. Not the person named in a will, not the current spouse if the form still says an ex or a parent from basic training. After any marriage, divorce, or birth, the five-minute SOES check is the highest-value piece of life insurance work a service member can do.

Family coverage: how FSGLI works

SGLI covers the member. Family SGLI (FSGLI) adds the household. Per va.gov, a spouse can carry up to $100,000 of coverage, never more than the member’s own SGLI amount, and each dependent child is covered for $10,000 at no cost.

• Civilian spouses are typically enrolled automatically, with the premium taken from the member’s pay.
• Military spouses married on or after January 2, 2013 are not automatic; the member signs them up through SOES.
• Spousal premiums are based on the spouse’s age and coverage amount, unlike the member’s flat rate.
• Child coverage is free, automatic, and can’t be reduced or converted.

One planning note: spousal FSGLI ends when your SGLI does. A spouse can convert their coverage to an individual permanent policy within 120 days of the member’s separation, so the family’s exit checklist has two names on it, not one.

What happens to SGLI when you leave the military

This is the section worth reading twice. SGLI gives you 120 days of free coverage from your date of discharge, and then it ends. Retire at 40, separate at 24, or leave the Guard after twelve years: the same clock runs. If you’re totally disabled when you separate, the SGLI Disability Extension can continue free coverage for up to 2 years; you apply with form SGLV 8715, and near the end of the extension you’re offered VGLI. Here is every path side by side, with deadlines set by va.gov:

The 240-day mark inside the VGLI window is the detail that changes outcomes. Apply for VGLI within 240 days of discharge and there are no health questions at all; your diabetes, your back, your deployment history, none of it counts. Apply on day 241 through the end of the window and you’ll need to show evidence of good health. For a veteran whose health changed in service, those first 240 days can be the difference between covered and not.

Say a staff sergeant separates in March with the full $500,000 and a shoulder full of hardware. Through early July, she’s covered for free. Through November, she can take VGLI at the full amount with no health questions, at rates that depend only on her age; our VGLI rates guide has the current numbers. She could instead convert to a permanent policy in those first 120 days, or, if she’s healthy, shop the private market where a fresh medical exam often buys a lower rate. The comparison worth making before the window closes is laid out in SGLI vs. VGLI.

Planning ahead of the deadline

If you’re mid-career with no separation date in sight, there’s usually nothing to fix. SGLI at $26 a month is a keep, and your whole to-do list is a beneficiary check in SOES and an honest look at whether $500,000 covers what your family would actually need. That’s it. No call required.

The planning window opens when separation gets real. Health drives the answer more than anything else. A healthy veteran can often beat VGLI’s age-banded pricing with a private term policy and a medical exam. A veteran whose health makes underwriting hard is often best served taking VGLI inside the 240-day no-questions window and keeping it. And a veteran with a service-connected rating has a third piece on the board: VALife, the VA’s guaranteed-acceptance whole life program, which can sit alongside VGLI or private coverage. The full map of options is in our guide to life insurance for veterans.

Which path fits comes down to your age, your health, your rating if you have one, and how many days are left on the clock. That’s a fifteen-minute conversation with someone who runs these numbers every day, and it should end with a specific answer, even when the answer is “take the VGLI and don’t overthink it.”