Thread: TSP Millionaires

I bumped my million up by 20%. Yee Haw.

I had hoped at one time to make that million $ mark but, I doubt now that it will happen. I retired at age 52 and starting taking a withdrawal under 72T rules. Though I'm still going up... this year has been especially good to the account to the tune of about $125,000, I think I will hit 59 1/2 before I get that magic 7 figure number. All's good though as I will be in great shape when that time comes and the million dollar mark is just that, a number.

Originally Posted by jkenjohnson

I bumped my million up by 20%. Yee Haw.

Way to go Jkenjohnson!

Now there's over 4000. A Growing Number of Wealthy Federal Employees : FedSmith.com

Account Balance	Number of Participants
Under $50,000	2,798,455
$50,000 – $249,999	1,426,098
$250,000 – $499,999	375,472
$500,000 – $749,999	95,664
$750,000 – $999,999	21,485
$1,000,000 and over	4167

Originally Posted by Cactus

Now there's over 4000. A Growing Number of Wealthy Federal Employees : FedSmith.com

Did you read the rollover part of the article? Pretty telling when the millionaire club has an average rollover of $546,117.04

How many active duty Military do you think comprise those 4 thousand?

Frixxxx,

The article stated that 18% of the millionaires rolled over assets from prior retirement accounts. That means 82% did it the hard way. I'm proud of em and want to be one someday. We all do with what we got with the time we have. I dumbly wandered the desert for more than five year before getting serious.

RothNRoll,

Without a match making a mill in TSP is much harder. But you have something called a real pension. Our pension won't even pay the rent. It won't keep me in dart and beer money. And, it definitely will not pay my health insurance premiums - which I will have to fully pay for in retirement. If you mix a military retirement with a FERS retirement you really got something going...

Originally Posted by Boghie

Frixxxx,

The article stated that 18% of the millionaires rolled over assets from prior retirement accounts. That means 82% did it the hard way. I'm proud of em and want to be one someday. We all do with what we got with the time we have. I dumbly wandered the desert for more than five year before getting serious.

RothNRoll,

Without a match making a mill in TSP is much harder. But you have something called a real pension. Our pension won't even pay the rent. It won't keep me in dart and beer money. And, it definitely will not pay my health insurance premiums - which I will have to fully pay for in retirement. If you mix a military retirement with a FERS retirement you really got something going...

Understood about the pension thing. It is possible for someone with 25 years of service to be on active duty with 1 million in TSP, with deployments and catch-up's. That is what had me wondering how many active duty members there are...

Originally Posted by rothnroll

How many active duty Military do you think comprise those 4 thousand?

The number of military millionaires has to be very small since their average balance is so small. From the article:
"This is important as the average TSP account from TSP investors who are in the uniformed serviced was $18,343 in December 2014. The average TSP balance for TSP investors who are in FERS was $115,046 for the same time period."

Originally Posted by rothnroll

How many active duty Military do you think comprise those 4 thousand?

Originally Posted by rothnroll

Understood about the pension thing. It is possible for someone with 25 years of service to be on active duty with 1 million in TSP, with deployments and catch-up's. That is what had me wondering how many active duty members there are...

Military TSP didn’t start until Oct 2001. So the best case we could find for a balance would be after 13 or so years. It would be interesting to see some statistics on our military brothers/sisters and their balances.

Skorcher answered part of this while I was typing.

PO

Originally Posted by rothnroll

Understood about the pension thing. It is possible for someone with 25 years of service to be on active duty with 1 million in TSP, with deployments and catch-up's. That is what had me wondering how many active duty members there are...

Along Skorcher's thought...

It is not too difficult to end up with a cool mil if you start young, invest in equities, and contribute 10% (meaning 15% for gubmint employees in FERS) of your salary to TSP. Remember, you will generally get COLAs and promotions which will increase your contributions.

However, an active duty military member will have to clear that match with his/her own cash. My 10% contribution equals your 15% contribution. It is still possible, but much more difficult.

In the end, I personally think the military should dump all/most of the pension benefit and match to 10% contributions to TSP. Or maybe automatically dump 5% into TSP (to an L Fund) and match the next 5%. That would reverse things and make the military retirement benefit better than the government service benefit. An additional benefit is that those who serve less than retirement years would have a transferable asset for retirement. Anyway, to me, that is fair. I got a fair deal but your deal should be fairer. I have never had the opportunity to get shot at - and even if you never had trigger time it definitely does not mean you never will have trigger time. Me, my risk is Twinkies and Jolt.