Thrift Savings Plan

Empire of the Fund is an exposé and examination of the way we save now. With the rise of the 401(k) and demise of the pension, the United States has embarked upon the richest and riskiest experiment in our financial history. Over the next twenty years, nearly eighty million baby boomers will retire at a pace of ten thousand per day. The hypothesis of our experiment is that millions of ordinary, untrained, busy citizens can successfully manage trillions of dollars in a financial system dominated by wealthy, skilled, and powerful financial institutions, many of which have a record of treating individual investors shabbily. The key tools in our 401(k) plans and individual retirement accounts are mutual funds, which have ballooned to hold more than $16 trillion. But these funds pose dangers to our savings in three ways: through structural vulnerabilities that give money managers the incentive to focus on marketing over investing; through the very human challenges of managing our savings decades into the future; and through the peril of financial professionals behaving badly, to our economic harm. Though Americans often hear of the importance of low fees in fund investing, few are aware of the astonishing panoply of ways that some financial advisers have illegally diverted money out of mutual funds: from abetting hedge funds to trade after the legal deadline, to inflating the assets on which they are paid a percentage, to paying kickbacks for brokers to sell their funds. This book will forewarn and forearm Americans by illustrating the structural flaws, perverse incentives, and litany of scandals that have bedeviled mutual funds. And by setting forth a pair of policy solutions to improve Americans' financial literacy and bargaining power, it will also attempt to safeguard our individual financial destinies and our nation's fiscal strength.

The Thrift Savings Plan : helping federal employees achieve retirement security : hearing before the Subcommittee on Federal Workforce, U.S. Postal Service, and Labor Policy of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, House of Representatives, One Hundred Twelfth Congress, first session, July 27, 2011.

The Thrift Savings Plan is a tax-advantaged individual investing vehicle for U.S. military personnel and federal government employees. With among the lowest fees in the business and government matches of up to 5% of participant contributions, it is also one of the greatest mechanisms through which to build long-term wealth in the world! The 2nd edition of "TSP Investing Strategies," published in early 2020, features significant updates and 50% more material to the best-selling 1st edition published in 2011. While many books cover various topics related to personal finance and investing, very little has been written specifically on investing in the TSP or on how to incorporate investing in the various TSP funds with one's overall financial goals. This 2nd edition examines 100+ years of investing in stock and bond indexes similar to those in the TSP over rolling 20-, 30-, and 40-year periods and implications for TSP investors in any market environment. Drawing from a structured examination of long-term market data, "TSP Investing Strategies" provides context for investing during major market swings, from euphoria to market crashes, as well as average time it takes for a buy-and-hold investor to recover following major market declines. The book details approaches for individual participants to determine their own mix of investments based on personal risk tolerances. The book also examines the impact of dollar-cost averaging, the importance of reinvesting dividends, compound growth and the 'rule of 72, ' correlation coefficients among the TSP funds, structured approaches to rebalancing funds over time, and approaches to debt management and 529 college savings plans, among many other topics. And in a new "Strategy VI," the 2nd edition also details important and potentially money-saving topics related to insurance, wills and trusts, and online and TSP account security. An extremely accessible, easily understood primer that simply and precisely explains the options and what they mean, "TSP Investing Strategies," 2nd edition, establishes a comprehensive road map for TSP investors to build greater wealth over the long term. This is the go-to book for anyone currently serving in the U.S. military or federal government, and for friends and family service members as well