I think optimism in a quick recovery is misplaced. Recovery will be partly dependent on those millions of people who lost their jobs recently getting back to work. In many (most?) cases their old job will not be there and they lack skills to find a good job amidst much-increased competition. It will...

Can't help but think it may have been deliberate TSP Board intervention to prevent big moves in our very large TSP pool of index based funds affecting markets... or maybe they were looking out for our best interests. Doesn't seem right either way. I don't believe our moves have any impact on the ma...

Thanks for pointing that out. My first thought on that - can you imagine how inconsequential the accounts are that are being forfeited under this description? We're talking about funds from new employee accounts that been open less than 90 days and some few CSRS employees. I would guess the forfeitu...

To continue with Part 2 here a short point from the latest TSP letter. By my observation over the years, TSP has made a big promotional point over how cheap their funds are. It has been an excuse for the fact they don't offer many [in fact, almost no] options compared to any other investment house, ...

Thanks for posting this - I wasn't aware they posted their meeting minutes. It seems to be a decision with no merit to alter the I Fund. Why can't they just make a separate 6th fund that tracks Emerging Markets? Like the rest of the commercial world has? Again (IMO), FRTIB fails to serve it's real c...

TSP recently published their Highlights letter for Jan/Feb 2018 which covers the year stats for 2017. You may have received it in the mail. Before getting into the 3 takeaways, let me put on my tin foil hat because I know many people vehemently protest when the facts don't fit their narrative - surp...

I believe in Trump's Economy. Wow! You make it sound like he's done such a great job for you. Meanwhile this very same person is making every effort to economically rape you, the federal employee, blind! Wake up and read the proposed budget. Then give him credit for stealing your future! That's wha...

What a failure! Since FRTIB doesn't care, they're nearly as bad as Equifax, the only option is to complain to your Congressperson about how FRTIB is failing and damaging you directly . FRTIB is only serving their own interests, not that of TSP participants at all. The worst service ever with the mos...

It doesn't sound like that should be happening.
I would suggest being on the phone with TSP until they have a resolution or reasonable explanation.
And please keep us posted here how it goes.

I agree with evilanne. Changing the I Fund index is theater to make it look like the FRTIB is working in our interests. They only have their own interests in mind, I wish I could fire them. Incidentally, I think if you polled financial advisers you would find a general consensus that adding emerging...

I think you're hitting on what I consider to be the logical fallacy to the "seasonal" calculations. They are 100% backward-looking only. Who cares what happened in the past you want to predict what is happening this year/month/week/tomorrow. If you think about it, investing is not at all l...

Another con of you see it that way is woth roth tap when you start withdraws as I understand it you can mot elect how much out of each account you want. So i xant say make all this distribution from my roth. I assume the way around this is to roll over to roth ira. Currently the poor TSP (and I am ...

Last thing for now, I think he left out some details in this calculation: "For a federal pension and social security to pay $90k in taxable income a year, working year income would need to be greater than $185k. As this is firmly in the 28% marginal tax rate, this family would also benefit by u...

Another idea the author (GCC) forgot to mention, IIRC (please correct if wrong):

1 difference between Roth and Traditional is with a Roth: NO RMDs (Required Minimum Distributions).

Here's a loose thought on this: by contributing on the Roth side now you are if nothing else hedging your bets. Since the gov't contribution goes 100% Traditional, if you do your own contribution to Roth then you'll hopefully have a decent reserve on both sides so either way you take half the hit. J...