Your TSP Options
TSP Funds
The Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) is set up with a variety of fund choices to hold your investment portfolio. Their applicability to your personal situation will vary based on your risk tolerance and your timeline.
What are the different fund choices?
| Regular Funds | Description | Index |
|---|---|---|
| G Fund | Government Securities | |
| F Fund | Mix of government and corporate bonds | Barclays Capital US Aggregate Bond Index |
| C Fund | Large-cap US stocks | Standard & Poor’s 500 (S&P 500) |
| S Fund | Mix of small- and mid-cap US stocks | Dow Jones US Completion Total Stock Market Index |
| I Fund | Mostly large-cap foreign stocks | Morgan Stanley Capital International EAFE Index |
If you are not sure of the proper diversification you need and prefer not to spend time tracking and reallocating funds based on changing time horizons, the Lifecycle Funds are also available. Lifecycle funds, or L Funds, are mixes of the G, F, C, S, and I funds determined by professionals for particular time horizons. Each L fund becomes more conservative as the retirement date nears.
If you are choosing an L Fund, decide when you expect to begin withdrawing the money from your TSP account. This will be your target date. Then you can consult the following chart, provided by the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment board at the tsp.gov website, for reference:
| Choose | If your target date is: |
|---|---|
| L 2050 | 2045 or later |
| L 2040 | 2035 through 2044 |
| L 2030 | 2025 through 2034 |
| L 2020 | 2017 through 2024 |
| L Income | If you are already withdrawing your account in monthly payments or expect to begin withdrawing before 2017 |
Your portfolio can contain more than one L Fund or a combination of L Funds and individual funds, if you so choose.
