Q. I am FERS-covered and plan to retire in August at age 62. I am now front-loading my TSP contributions to the maximum (including the $5,500 catch-up which I have already contributed). At retirement, I plan to roll over all my TSP balance to an outside IRA account.
Questions:
1) Will I be able to roll over the:
a) Traditional TSP portion to a traditional IRA account?
b) TSP Roth portion (which I started in 2013) to an outside established Roth IRA account?
2) Shall I now contribute the remainder (about $12,000 of $17,500) to the TSP Roth so that I can roll this over to my Roth IRA account where I can withdraw tax free whenever needed?
A. You are allowed to roll over your TSP Traditional and Roth balances to Traditional and Roth IRA accounts, respectively. You haven’t presented any reason to favor a Roth account over a Traditional account, so why complicate things? I think you would be better served to leave your money in the TSP for as long as possible.
