The military spouse thinks they are getting a extra for financial care for their family but what they don't know is that that money is wasted while they are alive. Better to know then for your family to be "stiffed" later on. Just put it in a savings account and not a government funding account.

As written in the Washington post: "The widows' tax is a law that won't allow surviving spouses to receive the retirement pay due them when their spouse died from a cause related to military service, and at the same time collect the full annuity - essentially an insurance policy most of their spouses opted to buy. They paid an average of 6.5 percent of their retirement pay in premiums, often $100 or more a month.

Because one benefit is subtracted from the other, affected surviving spouses lose about $1,000 a month on average. There are about 54,000 survivors who are affected by the policy, whose spouses served in conflicts from World War II to Afghanistan, and that number could grow.

She said some committee members sheepishly looked at her as they voted down the provision, "visibly uncomfortable that I was in the room. It went right down party lines, and it shouldn't be a partisan issue"

We widows are the constant (uncomfortable) reminder of the cost that our men pay to protect this nation. It will always be so until the families of those men/women are seen as a badge of courage that we too have paid a huge price that not even money can or will aleviate.