Debate swirls over whether TSP is living within its means

[Show-me]

The Thrift Savings Plan must bring down its costs in fiscal 2012, members of the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board said Monday. The board in May considered (http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?filepath=/dailyfed/0511/051611l1.htm) an initial budget estimate of $147.2 million for fiscal 2012, a 12 percent increase over the previous year, but asked officials to scale back those costs. TSP (http://topics.govexec.com/tsp/) Executive Director Greg Long on Monday offered $1.7 million in cuts, calling the revised $145.6 million budget request "reasonable" for the agency's growth.


http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=48274&dcn=todaysnews

Charge $7.00 a trade for unlimited trading!

[burrocrat]

http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=48274&dcn=todaysnews

Charge $7.00 a trade for unlimited trading!

1.7 mil / 147.2 mil = savings of 1.15%.

Woohoo! Don't short your cash cow there Mr. Long, way to get tough with the budget, I'm sure most federal agencies are looking at cuts way in excess of that.

If your job is too hard or unrewarding and you feel like nobody likes you, you could always go get another job, preferably not managing somebody else's money, because they might have even higher expectations than us dumb tsp folks.

Besides, there's plenty of spreadsheet monkeys out there could knock the socks of your performance for half the salary. And don't let the door hit ya where the good lord split ya.

I'd gladly pay $7 per trade, and actually put more $ in tsp and leave it in, if I only had more control and freedom with my funds.

[Buster]

Well said there Burro..I couldn't agree more

[Atarrin]

Charge $7.00 a trade for unlimited trading!

At first I thought the 7.00/trade idea was from the article. But was this idea an original one from you?

[Show-me]

Yes is was.

They screwed us by changing the code aginst our will to "save money", now they want to increase the TSP budget by 50% since 2003 and they did not save a dime in trading cost from what I can see. KISS my butt Tracy Ray and Greg Long! Jackasses! You too Saul, go away you want-a-be politician that did not even know what the Hatch Act is, idiot.

Venting feels good.

[sdouglas3]

As Jim cramer would say "their IDIOTS, nothing but IDIOTS, I'm done now."

That tsp board just screwed us all with the excuse of "cost of trading was excessive" crap. In my opinion Blackrock made the tsp board initiate the trading twice a month rule so they could continue to make money from their trading activity and not have us step in front of them. BASTARDS!

Steve

[nasa1974]

Going through some of the FRTIB's meeting minutes I have a hard time finding the trading expenses. I see the basis points and dollar figures, but the dollars appear to be the yearly budget numbers and not the trading expenses. Also Barclays's not Blackrock was the firm managing our funds at the time the FRTIB reduced our IFT's.

[FundSurfer]

I haven't followed the Board meeting minutes in a while, but I believe the increased cost has to do with the website upgrade and the publicity campaign they waged. They had to tell everyone about the new and improved website.

Maybe they are spending money getting ready to have a REIT fund? Precious metals fund sure would have been nice...

I'm not that impressed with the new website. I'm not sure that we got our money's worth from the website upgrade.

[nasa1974]

As I recall the beggining of the problem was the large amount of money traded in and out of the I fund over a short period of time and Barclays almost defaulted because they barely had the funds to cover all the trades.

[nasa1974]

I do not want to upset any of our postal employee friends but I was looking at the FRTIB's budget and their stamp and mailing budget is anywhere from $7M to $12M over the last couple of years.

[WorkFE]

To offer a precious metal fund now would make sense now that the big money to be made is done for the short to medium turn.

[sdouglas3]

Yeah, Barclays was managing the funds at the time before they were bought out by Blackrock in 2009.


Going through some of the FRTIB's meeting minutes I have a hard time finding the trading expenses. I see the basis points and dollar figures, but the dollars appear to be the yearly budget numbers and not the trading expenses. Also Barclays's not Blackrock was the firm managing our funds at the time the FRTIB reduced our IFT's.

[Silverbird]

I don't think TSP could handle a precious metal fund.