Q. I retired from the Air Force in 2004 after 30 years of service. I was rehired into the civil service ranks in November 2004 and immediately started investing into the Thrift Savings Plan’s L2020 account. I just turned 58 and plan on retiring when I hit 60, maybe 62 if my health holds up. How long should I keep my investments in the L2020 account? As I get closer to retirement date, should I move it from L2020 to one of the individual funds? A. If you’re not sure about what to do, to support you goals with a…
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Q. I’m a 45-year-old reservist who has been recalled to active duty. I’m also an E-6 with more than 18 years of service. I can afford to invest my entire pay, including incentive pays, and wondered if it would be better to pay off an existing mortgage, approximately $60,000, just refinanced last month at 3.5 percent and a 15-year term? Or would it be better to max out the Roth TSP and set up another deferred account or IRA of some sort? My wife makes about $55,000 per year. A. It’s impossible to say what’s best for you without the…
Q. I recently turned 59½. I want to do the following with my retirement account, which the Thrift Savings Plan does not allow: I want to be able to withdraw small amounts of funds from time to time from my retirement account, generally limited to a portion of the gains earned by the account. TSP allows a one-time in-service withdrawal. I want to have the ability to make transfers between funds. TSP limits transfers to two per month, but if the first is into equities and the second is into the G Fund, effectively that means only one transfer into equities a month.…
Q. I have about 10 percent of my TSP invested in the International Fund and about 90 percent invested in the G fund. I do not want to take payments for the International Fund because it is down so much. Can I just take payments from the G fund and wait until the International Fund recovers, or do I have to take a proportional amount form each fund? A. Any distributions will come from your investment funds proportionally. You may rebalance after the withdrawal is made, however.
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 am a federal employee. I have an HDHP (family plan) with an HSA through a FEHB insurer. The HSA cash account is getting funded to the extent that I would like to exercise some investment options. However, the investment options with the HSA trustee are load funds with high expenses that don’t have the greatest track record. Can I set up a separate HSA with another fund family and transfer funds from the cash account to the separate HSA? Or am I stuck with the investment options selected by the FEHP insurer? The insurer is Aetna and the…
Q: Is there any way for me to see what specific stocks my Thrift Savings Plan is invested in? I can see the general funds, but what about specific companies? A: You’ll need to check the TSP Fund Fact Sheet for each fund for the description of the index on which the fund is based, and then research that index for a list of its components. For example, the C Fund tracks the performance of the Standard and Poor’s 500 Index, which is a proprietary, weighted collection of 500 stocks. By the way, there is no guarantee that the funds…
Q: Is it possible for me to invest in gold funds through the Thrift Savings Plan program? A: Not at this time.