Who can use our TSP newsletter?
Our TSP newsletter is specifically designed for participants in the federal government's Thrift Savings Plan. If you have a TSP account, this newsletter is for you.
If you need advice for a non-TSP account, our Core ETF newsletter might be more appropriate for you. However, the TSP newsletter might still be useful. Provided that the two conditions discussed below are met, the newsletter can be used by participants in other retirement savings plans, such as 401(k), 403(b), 457, and Individual Retirement Account (IRA). Of course, it can also be used by anyone who has an account with a stock broker — having a retirement plan is not required. Again though, if you do have a regular brokerage account, you should consider our Core ETF letter instead.
Access to similar funds
The first condition for successfully using our TSP newsletter is that your plan has mutual funds or exchange-traded funds that are similar to TSP Individual funds. Our newsletter does not allocate any money to TSP Lifecycle funds. So if your retirement plan does not have funds similar to the Lifecycle funds, don't worry about it. As long as you have access to funds that are similar to the Individual funds, you are fine.
The Individual funds track very broad market components, so most retirement plans should have funds that are similar to them. Below is a brief description of each fund that is intended to help you match up the TSP funds to similar funds in your retirement account. You might also be interested in a more detailed description.
G Fund: Money market.
F Fund: Investment-grade bonds (both government and corporate). Follows the Lehman Aggregate Bond index. Mutual fund names might include the words "Total Bond" or "U.S. Bond".
C Fund: Large-cap stocks. Follows the S&P 500 index. Mutual fund names might include the number "500" or the phrase "Large-cap".
S Fund: Mid and small-cap stocks. Also called the extended market — the entire US stock market not including the large-cap stocks. Follows the Wilshire 4500 index. Mutual fund names might include the words "Completion" or "Extended Market".
I Fund: International stocks. Stocks from developed countries, excluding United States and Canada. Follows the MSCI EAFE index. Mutual fund names might include the words "Developed Markets", "Europe Pacific", "International", "EAFE", or "Europe, Australasia, and Far East".
Ability to perform interfund transfers when needed
The second condition for successfully using our TSP newsletter is that your retirement plan allows you to make interfund transfers when our newsletter calls for them. Many retirement plans limit the number of interfund transfers that their participants can make. For example, under TSP's interfund transfer (IFT) rule, participants can make two interfund transfers per month. After the first two interfund transfers, all following interfund transfers within the month can only transfer money into the G Fund ("Money market"). Other retirement plans might have other rules. For example, some plans allow only one interfund transfer within a 30 day period.
To guarantee that our newsletter complies with TSP's IFT rule, it is published only twice per month. However, not every newsletter calls for an interfund transfer. Thus, you might still be able to use our newsletter even if the interfund transfer rule in your retirement plan is stricter than it is in the TSP. While in some years our newsletter has called for 24 interfund transfers, the maximum number possible, in other years it called for much less. Learn more about the historical number of interfund transfers that our newsletter has called for.