Is your TSP is on track to meet your goals?
Not a Reserve Officer?
Instructions
As a reservist, your pay has a few more moving parts than active duty. This tool is designed to capture these intricacies and show how you can expect your TSP to grow.
How to use it:
- Modify average annual rate of return as desired. Default is 10% – roughly the averaged annualized return of the C Fund.
- Enter your effective State and Local tax rates and tax filing status.
- Enter the value (if applicable) of your TSP when you transitioned from active to reserve.
- Enter the number of years you expect between End of Service (EOS) and retirement.
- For each pay grade, input:
- Years of (total) service and months served at that pay scale.
- If you fall into two different categories for one pay grade, enter it as two separate entires
- Number of drill weekends you completed (or expect to complete).
- Days served in an active duty capacity (or plan to serve).
- Percentage of drill and active pay you’ve contributed (or plan to contribute).
- Years of (total) service and months served at that pay scale.
Black Boxes
The black boxes below become interactive if you select a pay grade in the corresponding row. This is done to avoid clutter while allowing several combinations of ‘pay grade’ and ‘years of service’, which in turn appropriately accounts for pay scales over your reserve career.
More Details
This calculator currently uses 2021 pay scales and tax brackets, but is updated appropriately each year. FICA and federal income taxes are accounted for, as are pay increases based on cumulative time in service.
Since state and local taxes can vary and sometimes have a substantial effect over time, we left those to the user to input so he/she can get a better personal estimate of TSP projections.
Finally, and potentially most importantly, this calculator uses the entered rate of return year over year and month over month. If we could predict the market, we’d be able to tell you exactly what your TSP would be worth. Until then, understand that this is ultimately an estimated projection based on whatever average rate of return is entered by the user. This includes the years between EAS and true retirement, when the value of the TSP will continue to grow despite the fact that no further contributions are made.
A downloadable version modified for easy offline editing is available below.
