Are you in the Thrift Savings Plan, or TSP, for short
If you're not, and you're a federal employee, you certainly should be
The TSP is one of the most popular benefits for federal employees, and you want to take advantage of it
It's also a good way to ensure, if you do it right, that you're going to have a very comfortable income in your retirement when you get to that point in a federal career
If you're now a retiree, staying in the TSP, is a good way to keep some income
coming in, in addition to the annuity that you get from FERS or from CSRS and from Social Security
There are something like 7.2 million TSP accounts now, according to the Thrift Savings Plan
So it's a very popular plan, and people are taking advantage of it
Are you a TSP millionaire? Fitzsmith does an article on this, usually every quarter or so
and the number of TSP millionaires is exploding. It's going up rapidly
The reason being that the stock market in the last couple of years
has had a very strong bull market and it's still going on
as the time this recording is being done. There was one person now
who has in excess of million in his TSP account or hers We don know who the person is obviously The TSP doesn release a lot of detailed information and you wouldn expect them to But in addition to that one person
there are over 157,000 federal employees now who are also TSP millionaires. Back when we started
reporting on this topic, in 2011, there were 208 millionaires. A lot of people at the time, or some people
wrote in and said, well, these people aren't federal employees cell. Or they may be now, but they haven't been
They transferred money in. And it's possible at that time that's the case
We have no way of knowing. However, if you look at the number of TSP millionaires now, 157,760 of them
and they have an average federal career of over 28 years. So most of them have been with the federal government for an entire career
They didn't transfer the money in. The next question is, if you're not one of the TSP millionaires, will you become one
Now, if you're starting out your federal career, obviously you're not. It takes a long time or it takes some time, clearly, to get to that point
A million dollars isn't what it was worth when the cup of coffee was a quarter
Now it's probably $7 at Starbucks. It still a lot of money and this is in addition to your annuity So between several sources of income you should have a comfortable retirement a comfortable income during your retirement and you probably will
The people who become millionaires in the TSP don't leave their money in the G fund
The G fund is the safest fund. That's the reputation. And initially, most people invested in the G fund, and that made sense
Investing in stocks wasn't something a lot of employees knew a lot of. about. They felt comfortable looking at their statements each month and seeing my money went up
At least it didn't go down. If you invest in the stock funds, the C fund, the S fund, the I fund
these are stock funds that are so-called core TSP funds and they provide a good source of income
over the time of a typical federal employment career. There are years when they go down
and they can go down 20 or more percent in a year. Overall, over time, you make a lot more money keeping your money in
Most employees don't transfer money during the month. You can, and the TSP typically is reports at 2%
maybe as much as 3% of people, and transfer their money from one fund to another
The G fund, as I said, used to be the biggest fund. At the end of November that has changed Now 36 are in the C fund another 10 are in the S fund and 23 of assets are in the G fund
A lot of that has happened since the start of the bull market in 2022
Most people find, I'm not a financial advisor, but if you look at articles on investing
keeping your money and try instead of in the funds, instead of trying to time the market, works out better
If you try to time the market, you have the couple of times you have to be right
You have to know when to sell. You have to know when to buy. Most people can't do that
In fact, almost nobody can do it. But if you leave your money invested, stay the course over 25, 35, even a 40-year career
You're going to end up being one of these TSP millionaires. Smith does videos like this one. We also do a newsletter on the internet and several times a week
we send out an email to subscribers. The subscription's free. You can also subscribe to our videos
They're also free. And the articles go into more detail than the videos. So we hope you'll
take advantage of that. I thank you for watching today. And good luck in your investing as a federal employee