The Thrift Savings Plan has hit a new
record recently. There are now nearly
195,000 TSP millionaires. What's driving
this increase and what can you learn
from these successful TSP investors? Hi
everyone, I'm Ian Smith here with
fedsmith.com and I wanted to talk to you
today about this uh staggering number of
TSP millionaires and the success of
these these uh current and former
federal employees investing in the
Thrift Savings Plan. There's a saying,
you become who you hang around. And in
the Bible, it talks about this a little
bit, too. It's there's a proverb that
says, "Walk with the wise and become
wise. Associate with fools and get in
trouble." That's Proverbs 13:20. And you
can apply that philosophy to studying
the TSP millionaires. That's why I bring
it up. It may sound a little off topic,
but if you want to become wealthy, do
what wealthy people do. That's basically
the principle. And so if you want to
have a successful retirement, look at
what other people who have successfully
prepared for retirement are doing. First
off, what is a TSP millionaire? Well,
basic, it's pretty much what it sounds
like. It's anyone who has at least a
million dollars or more in his or her
TSP account. This includes anyone under
defer, CSRS, military, etc. Basically,
anyone participating in the thrift
savings plan. As I mentioned, we just
hit a record number in at the end of
2025. the number of individuals who have
reached this important milestone. There
are now 194,722
TSP millionaires. The average years of
contributions for these individuals is
27.77
years. I'll talk about that a little bit
more later. And the largest TSP account
is now 9.96 million. So that's quite
impressive as well. It's it's been in
the past even higher. I don't know if
it's the same person. The TSP doesn't
release that information, but in the
past it's been over 10 million. Within
the TSP, there are now 7,280,829
total participants.
And there also, as you can see again
from the chart, there are 136,594
participants who are in the 750,000 to
9999,000
range. So they're some of them are on
the cusp of becoming millionaires. Now
the number of millionaires in the TSP
has surged considerably especially in
the last few years. Fedsmith has been
tracking these data for quite a while
now going back to 2011. I'll put this
table up on the screen here for you to
give you some perspective. Back in 2011,
there were only 208 millionaires. Like I
said, now we're approaching 200,000.
So that that's an astronomical amount of
growth. That's an increase of 93,516%
in 14 years. Just since 2020,
the number of TSP millionaires has grown
by 158%. In 2020, as you can see, it was
75,420.
And to give you some perspective,
um the stock market has done very well
in that time, hence the increase in
these figures. Since 2011, the S&P 500,
that's the index that the C fund within
the TSP tracks, it's averaged about 13%
during that time. And from 2020 to 2025,
it's averaged about 13.7%.
If you dig into the figures a little bit
more, um they're they're interesting as
well. I'll put this table up on the
screen for you so you can see. This is a
breakout of the balance categories, the
number of participants within the TSP in
these ranges approaching 195,000
millionaires now. And they represent
almost 3% of total participants. So that
that's very impressive. The largest
number of participants are those who are
just starting out. They've been
contributing only for about six years
and there's over four million of them.
What these figures show clearly is they
reinforce the core message that time in
the market is the probably the biggest
factor in this. You're not going to
become a millionaire in the TSP
overnight. So what are some of the
general principles that TSP millionaires
follow? Here are some general factors to
keep in mind. As I said, they invest for
a long period of time. Nearly 28 years
of investing and contributing to the TSP
on average. So that's over the course of
much of a federal career. The
contributions are consistent. The more
you invest, the more wealth you're going
to build. So contributing with every
single paycheck. That's something
federal employees can do. That's one of
the benefits of the TSP. Slow and
steady. Many of the TSP millionaires
also are going to be investing more in
the stock funds in the TSP. Uh those are
the CS and I funds. The fund in
particular has done very well.
recently over the past year or so and
I'll include a link to an article in the
description that that breaks down the
returns of the TSP in 2025 for some
perspective on that. Also, you have to
stay invested through market downturns.
Think back to times like COVID or in
2008 when the stock market dropped
considerably. That's pretty stressful.
If you log into your account and you see
your balance dropping every day, that's
not easy to to look at and it's hard to
stay invested. But if you look at the
performance of the stock market over
time and you are invested for the long
haul and you're not about to take the
money out to use in retirement, for
example, then over time it it will do
very well. That's that's what the data
show about the historic performance of
the stock market. Also, you want to
avoid loans and withdrawals as much as
possible if you take money if you borrow
money from your TSP account. That's
cutting off the growth that the
compounding interest effect that that
money could have. And also taking full
advantage of the match. The government
matches the contributions you make to
the TSP as long as you contribute at
least a certain amount. And that's a
that's free money essentially.
Now, as I showed in the the data from
the TSP earlier, the majority of
participants in the TSP are not at this
point yet. And I'm not presenting all
this to you to make you feel
discouraged. In fact, the opposite. I
want to encourage you and see I want you
to see this is what can happen over the
course of your federal career. If you
invest slowly and steadily, you will
build wealth wealth for retirement. The
TSP is a great retirement benefit for
federal employees. And again, these data
show that becoming a TSP millionaire is
not only possible, but a lot of people
have done it over the course of their
federal careers. It just takes time,
consistency, and then um the compounding
effect of of being invested in the stock
market over a long period of time. I
hope this information was helpful and
encouraging to you. Please remember to
like and subscribe to the channel if you
found it useful to get more updates. And
um I've also included some links to
articles on FedSmith in the description
that are related to this topic that you
may find helpful. Also, thank you for
watching.