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Saturday, December 3, 2011

Max Out Your TSP in 2012

We've just updated the "Max Out Your TSP" table for the proposed 1.6% military active duty pay increase for 2012. Here's the link.

Here's how you use it. In this example, a Major (O-4) with more than 18 years of service would go to MyPay.gov, select the TSP link, and select 19.8% as their monthly contribution.

Similarly, a Lieutenant Colonel with 16 years of service would contribute 18.2% of their base pay to max out their TSP for the year.

Here are a couple of notes. First, this table assumes that the Congress will approve the 1.6% increase and that the President will sign the bill into law. Second, it assumes that you will want to max out the TSP at $17,000 for the year. If you are older than 50 the max contribution is $22,500. This table does not account for the extra $5,500 catch up provision.

3 comments:

Daniel said...

Also, you may want to delay funding your TSP until the Roth option becomes available in Q2 2012.

interested in retirement said...

I wanted to know if you are married with 2 incomes what is the total about that can be contributed with different 401K/TSP accounts.

Lee said...

Married couples can each contribute to their own 401K/TSP account up to $17,000 in 2012, or $22,500 if over age 50.

You can only contribute up to the wage earner's income in each account, however. So if a spouse is working part time at a company with a 401K and earns $8,000, they could contribute the entire $8,000, but no more.

If you wanted to save more you could do so in an IRA.