Thread: What would you ask TSP if you had the chance?

I would be glad to pay $10 a trade if we had real time trading. The last time that I bought into the S fund it was down 2% before the deadline only to rally in the afternoon, I felt that I was robbed of 2% and that’s a lot of money in my account.

Not sure this is the right location for this question but here goes.

Could a change be made to our TSP accounts which would allow CSRS folks to withdraw funds to pay off or pay down on our home mortgages without any penalties? I don't mean withdraw funds due to a hardship case or even take a loan out. These examples currently exist. I'm talking about a penalty free withdrawal due to the current hard economic times. I only mention CSRS folks because FERS folks have the government contribute (match) up to 5% of employee contributions. The CSRS folks don't have any government matching.

Irish, Even without penalty you would have to pay tax on the withdrawal amount. Not sure the economics works on this one. i.e. earnings on G fund vs mortgage interest(net of tax benefit)? You could, I suppose, reduce your TSP contributions and use the money to pay extra on the principal. Probably not wise in this environment however, would want to increase contributions to take advantage of cheap share prices? Don't know what your interest rates are on your mortgage but refinancing may be an option since rates are pretty low right now. You could take the reduction in payment due to the interest rate decrease and pay down the principal? Just a thought. Good luck

Originally Posted by IrishBill

Not sure this is the right location for this question but here goes.

Could a change be made to our TSP accounts which would allow CSRS folks to withdraw funds to pay off or pay down on our home mortgages without any penalties? I don't mean withdraw funds due to a hardship case or even take a loan out. These examples currently exist. I'm talking about a penalty free withdrawal due to the current hard economic times. I only mention CSRS folks because FERS folks have the government contribute (match) up to 5% of employee contributions. The CSRS folks don't have any government matching.

That's more of an IRS question. Penalties and taxes are based on the outdated...er I mean tax laws, not TSP.


But here's mine: Now that we have a new administration that promises change, can the board retire so that we can get some new blood in the overseers offices????

I read somewhere that all of the board members terms have expired and they all need to be replaced. My hope is they put in new board members and get rid of whoever it was in charge that made the changes. Then at least there'd be a chance we could go back in time to before the limits were started. And possibly have the cut off time to make IFT's changed to later in the day.
Does anyone know who appoints the board members? Is it the president?
Now might be a very good time to get the new policy overturned with the new administration.

Sure hope someone other than me noticed that this is a thread that's been dead since Sep 2007...

Not dead yet!

Would the TSP board be willing to have direct discussions with the new O'bama administration about the problems that arose out of unlimited IFT's. I would be interested in hearing of the perceived benefits and problems that would arise if a new system would be put into place that would allow TSP participants to pay a nominal fee for a 1 trade per day, if that's too cumbersome then, or 1 trade per week for a nominal fee.
I know computers and there may be some out there who'd try to break computer software things, so I feel a limit on trades is needed.
We are a united group that's willing to listen and talk about issues and we should all start with our polical leaders sending them barrages of mail or emails (no spam) to get them to wake up.

Why havent they given us the roth option already. With the market down so much, great time to invest with tax free withdrawal.