The Reality of Becoming a TSP Millionaire

[mjedlin66]

Best advice: don't get divorced. Just turned 50 last month, one month after divorce finalized, and TSP balance dropped from $875K to $410K... poof. More damage than any market correction could ever do.

Marry someone who makes and invests roughly the same amount that you do. My wife and I have similar salaries and similar retirement balances.

[userque]

Best advice: don't get divorced. Just turned 50 last month, one month after divorce finalized, and TSP balance dropped from $875K to $410K... poof. More damage than any market correction could ever do.

Marry someone who makes and invests roughly the same amount that you do. My wife and I have similar salaries and similar retirement balances.

Ha! The KJV spoke to this thousand's of years ago ... being equally yoked.

[LaserGuy]

Hi Folks! Sorry to post and disappear but I've been traveling the past 10 days.

To crondanet5 and others: I'm just not interested in the fantasy TSP, I have a fun money account with several ETFs that I manage as well as a couple of rental properties, so no time for fantasy investing. The reason(s) I made my post: 1) I figured this was a good place to do an emotional data dump after getting $50 away from a 7 figure TSP and then getting sneezed on by COVID-19. Most folks just wouldn't understand, they think you're bragging if you say you have ~$1M, and they don't really have much of a clue about how hard it is to get there and the difficulty and stress involved in managing it once you do. 2) Also, I figured some folks on here who still have a way to go to reach their TSP goal might learn something from my experience, or perhaps be better prepared when you get close to the magical $1M mark. The main lesson being that the stock market does not give a rat's a$$ about your TSP!! So keep an eye on the charts - 200 day MA etc, and don't be afraid to move to safety when the urge hits. The move I made to G fund on the 21st saved me, I'm safely on the sidelines just 2% away from a $1M TSP rather than 15-20% away.

To cswift01: I've been a fed for 25 years, started when I was in grad school. I'm a financial news junkie so I keep up to date with the economic trends and move in and out of the funds as I see fit. I tried a TSP Talk subscription for a while and wasn't happy with the results, so I just follow my own intuition. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't but I've learned that turning over my financial decisions to someone else just doesn't work for me.

Hey friends its ugly out there, play safe and let's hope we get a snap back once the weather heats up and the virus starts to fizzle. These oil markets are getting decimated though, that is liable to drag this out for a while.

[TSPBuilder]

Well DAP, you know what a good lawyer will tell you,, "it s a 50 /50 situation. When you get married, she gets half. When you get divorced, she gets the other half....

LOL, it’s probably more like 25/75 when you get married

Egads! I hope whoever does get divorced gets it written up as a ratio of time married over time worked for the gov't. Thankfully the ex didn't think I could manage the TSP well and there wouldn't be anything to claim on by retirement and let me buy her out of it for $30K (had over a hundred in it at the time and retired with 430K in it
).

[12squared]

This week I reached a TSP milestone. At the beginning of 2016 when I joined TSPcenter my balance was $440k. This had been accumulated over 19 years of Buy & Hold (15% G, 15% F, 70%C), during which time I contributed 10% of my salary, but made no IFTs. Since then my contributions (including agency matches) total $137k.

[ProduceMan]

This week I reached a TSP milestone. At the beginning of 2016 when I joined TSPcenter my balance was $440k. This had been accumulated over 19 years of Buy & Hold (15% G, 15% F, 70%C), during which time I contributed 10% of my salary, but made no IFTs. Since then my contributions (including agency matches) total $137k.

Congrats 12 SQ

[12squared]

Congrats 12 SQ

Thanks. I am hopeful that many more from this site will hit that mark.

[Aitrus]

This week I reached a TSP milestone. At the beginning of 2016 when I joined TSPcenter my balance was $440k. This had been accumulated over 19 years of Buy & Hold (15% G, 15% F, 70%C), during which time I contributed 10% of my salary, but made no IFTs. Since then my contributions (including agency matches) total $137k.

Very nice!

How actively have you been moving money around since 2016? I take it you found active investing to be more successful for you than buy-and-hold?

Do you have an estimate of how much you would have had if you had remained with buy-and-hold?

[12squared]

How actively have you been moving money around since 2016? I take it you found active investing to be more successful for you than buy-and-hold?

Do you have an estimate of how much you would have had if you had remained with buy-and-hold?

It depends on the time frame. In 2016, I finished less than 1% (points) behind my 15-15-70 mix of G-F-C. In 2019 and 2021 I was 9-10% worse. However, in 2022 I did 17% better. This doesn’t match my fantasy account performance because my allocations to my real TSP have often been more conservative than those on TSPcenter.

If I had stayed the course with my 15-15-70 mix of G-F-C I would have hit $1M in 2021. However, I would have been below $950k by the end of 2022. Using my more aggressive TSPcenter allocations, I would have finished just short of $1M in 2021, and around $1.06M in 2022.