Browsing: calculator

The Thrift Savings Plan’s website, www.tsp.gov, has posted a new income calculator. Well, it’s not entirely new, it’s mostly just remodeled. Now, instead of going directly to the old monthly payment calculator or the annuity payment calculator, you must go through a wizard that automatically runs both and compares the results. As much as I like the TSP and have endorsed its use, I have to say that I find this effort to be misguided and disappointing. I can’t imagine how the cost-benefit analysis was run to produce a green light for expending participant’s resources on what is an entirely…

Q. My wife and I pulled our retirement in about 1994 or later and invested. The market didn’t help it grow, given the lost decade and other downturns in the economy. I had previously converted mine to a Roth (bad idea). Now I’m 63 and hoping to retire in three to five years unless something worse happens in the next two fiscal years. My wife is nine years younger. We deposited our retirement pulled from other employers into the Thrift Savings Plan, which in both cases is probably larger than if we had kept our federal retirement where it was.…

Q. If I take $40,000 for 15 years from TSP, using the calculator it shows that at the end of the 15 years, I would be paying $45,000. What happens if I pay it off in a year (for example, I come into some money, sell an investment property). Do I still pay that $5,000 in unpaid interest, or is the interest re-amortized to the current date of payoff? Basically, I need some extra money for a down payment on a new primary residence. If I take the loan over the 15 years, it is a very low payment ($112…

Q. Do you happen to have any articles about the pros and cons of paying off the mortgage in retirement? We had paid off ours. But we moved to downsize before selling the bigger house. So we took on a VA mortgage at a relatively low interest rate last November. When we sell the big house, we have two options: Keep the mortgage and invest all the money, or pay off the mortgage and invest the balance. I retire in January 2013, and our pension income will be half our current income. Is there a “calculator” to evaluate the choices? A.…

Q. I was under the impression that I could make monthly withdrawals from the Thrift Savings Plan and change that amount every year. When I try to calculate how long my chosen amount will last, I get a message saying the amount I have chosen is less than the interest I will accrue. Why is this? Am I forced to choose an amount that is greater than what I want? A. The calculator won’t work unless the amount of your withdrawals exceeds the amount of interest that will accrue each month based on the interest assumption you entered. This is…