09/09/2026
A report came out this week that stopped me for a second. TSP millionaires just topped 224,000, up from about 171,000 a year ago. That's real money, and for a lot of federal employees I talk to, it feels like proof they did everything right.
And they did. But underneath that number sits a gap I keep running into. Federal employees are now pulling more money out of the TSP in loans and withdrawals than they're putting in, a net outflow of $13.7 billion through June. A balance that big looks like security. It doesn't tell you anything about how that money comes out, in what order, or what it does to your tax bill the year you actually need it.
I worked through a scenario a while back with a federal employee couple, one still working, one already retired, close to a million dollars combined between their TSP accounts. Neither one had ever run the numbers on sequencing. Not because they weren't sharp, but because nobody had ever sat the pension, the TSP, and Social Security down together and asked what happens when all three turn on at the same time.
That's the part the balance never shows you. And with markets bouncing around the way they have this week, oil prices spiking, the Fed still an open question, a big number on a statement is not the same thing as a plan underneath it.
I'm walking through exactly this with John Crawford, our Senior Financial Advisor, in a free 45-minute session on Wednesday, September 16 at 12:00 PM Central. No pitch, no obligation, just the pension, TSP, and Social Security laid out side by side the way most people never get to see them. If you're within five years of retirement, or you know someone who is, the link's in the comments.
