Newbie Question

[hooligans34]

I have 25 yrs of BOP service and plan to work 3-4 more years. I'm currently in the 2050 with a $400,000 balance but was thinking of changing to 60 % in C and 40% in S and switching my future contributions to 100% S. Is now a bad time to do that?

 

[nasa1974]

hooligans34,

Welcome aboard.

You may get a bunch of suggestions but no one will tell you what to do.
Jumping from an L fund to C & S is going to be more of a risk but can be more rewarding. Right now with the volatility in the market it will depend how thick skinned you are to risk and maybe loosing a few thousand before you see some substantial gain.
The bottom line is yours to decide if it is worth it or not.
Keep asking questions.

Good luck.

 

[tsptalk]

Welcome hooligans!

With 3 - 4 years left, whether you go to 100% stocks probably depends on if you're planning on leaving it alone If so, it may be too aggressive. Stocks are extremely overvalued on an historical basis, and we don't know when the next day of reckoning may come. Next year... 10 years?

If you read anything from John Hussman (https://www.hussmanfunds.com/comment/mc200712/) you'd probably be burying your cash in your backyard (not that bad )) but his models do show that history suggests the next 12 years could be rather flat for stocks.

Now, where to get a return is a good question - bonds and cash pay next to nothing, but the main point is that stocks probably won't just be flat for 12 years straight. They'll go down, then up, then down, etc.

That's why I like to do more trading / market timing. It may not always work, but watching stocks plummet as a buy and holder can be very rough, as you probably witnessed in March.

Good luck, and thanks for joining us!

I have 25 yrs of BOP service and plan to work 3-4 more years. I'm currently in the 2050 with a $400,000 balance but was thinking of changing to 60 % in C and 40% in S and switching my future contributions to 100% S. Is now a bad time to do that?

 

[flalaw97]

I am new to TSPTalk but I read as many of the posts as I can and one thing I think folks here drive home is that how agressive you want to be (60 C and 40 S is very aggressive) also depends on when you plan to start drawing from your TSP. If you are retiring in 3 to 4 years and plan to immediately start drawing $ from TSP, you may want to be less aggressive to preserve your capital. If you won't need to tap that TSP account for a while after you retire, you have more time to weather potential ups and downs of the stock market.