At one point in your life you’ve probably thought to yourself “I wish I had a million dollars.” However, you most likely weren’t referencing your retirement account! Everyone knows they need to be saving for retirement, but it’s not exactly “fun.” Looking at some of these statistics may provide some motivation to find the “fun” in saving. If nothing else, it will hopefully encourage Federal Employment Retirement System (FERS) employees to take advantage of the five percent match in your Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) account.
The truth is; people who don’t invest at least five percent to get that match are walking away from the equivalent of a five percent, tax-deferred increase in pay each year. That’s probably why the FERS participation rate for the TSP has held steady at 89.3 percent.
In a July 11, 2016 edition of Federalnewsradio.com, Mike Causey reported that almost 5 million people — active, retired or their survivors — are in the federal Thrift Savings Plan.
- 8 million people have balances of $50,000 or less.
- More than 1.4 million investors have accounts worth between $50,000 and $249,000.
- Just over 92,000 have balances of between half a million and $749,000.
- Another 18,846 have balances between $750,000 and $999,000.
- And almost 3,300 people have account balances of $1 million or more – 418 of those millionaires are regular rank-and-file feds.
Regardless of where you are, you deserve to enjoy your retirement without the burden of worrying about financial security. The key is planning ahead! Understanding the TSP portion of retirement is critical to making informed decisions about how to prepare for your future. For more information, check out this blog post we wrote about federal employee retirement planning.
