One More TSP Transfer, Please!

In late 2007, the TSP announced that they would be implementing restrictions to the number of interfund transfers you can make in your Thrift Savings Plan account. We went from unlimited transfers, to two per month. I feel very strongly that one more transfer per month might actually work. Two is not always enough.

Right now with the two interfund transfer limit (plus the unlimited G-Fund transfers), there is no room for error. With three transfers you can actually make a mistake and not be completely stuck. You would have the opportunity to buy and sell twice during a month, rather than once.

As you may know two transfers basically allows you buy into the stock or bond funds one time, leaving you one transfer to sell. One round-trip trade as they would call it at a brokerage firm.

If you do transfer into stocks and it turns out to be bad timing, you might want to step aside again by moving back into the G-fund before your account takes a big hit - but then you are stuck!

With a 3rd transfer you'd get another shot rather than sitting on sidelines waiting for the month to end.

When the TSP implemented the tranfer limits, the market was still behaving quite orderly, and had for the prior 4 to 5 years. Since then, volatility has picked up in a big way and our TSP balances have been swinging wildly. Does anyone remember late 2008? Wow!

I doubt we'll ever see unlimited transfers again, but can we get one more - One more interfund transfer, please? Thank you.


Please share this (on twitter, facebook, at work, etc.). Let's get the word out that we'd really like to be given one more transfer per month. Here's the link: http://www.tsptalk.com/mb/blog.php?b=236
 
One More Transfer

With the volatile market and only two IFT's per month, don't you think we are losing out on opportunities for profit.

Why not have two free IFT's per month and then charge a standard rate for each IFT after? I'd gladly pay 7 to 10 dollars per IFT if I were able to play these small highs and lows more often.

It just seems to me that everyone would possibly win in this situation.
 
Valleymd said:
I simply rebalance my portfolio once per quarter, so 2 IFTs per month are more than enough for me.
Isn't the gist of a retirement fund buy and hold... for 30 years? number of IFTs. .... This reinforces 'buy and hold', because it generally wins out in the long run
Valleymd, using myself as an example- I am already retired, I didn't work for the government `for years & years,' my salary was low; consequently so are the funds in my TSP. If I had left them at B&H last year there would have been none left to get back into the game. so I sat in G. When the market started up this last spring, I was very anxious about getting back in d/t knowing I would only have the two moves. I did re-engage this fall, then found myself unable to move into the F fund when it was on its way up. With a Retirement Buy and Hold Fund you will only receive what is in there at your retirement - so you sure wouldn't want to retire in a down year! To say `it generally wins out in the long run' is prejudiced against others in my position. I would dearly love to have another move, particularly closer to close time, selfishly though, because I am usually at Volunteering in the mornings. If you feel you don't need even two moves, you most probably could make better use of your comments & educating the tsp'ers in one of the other threads. (You may not realize, though, that some of the B&H folks you see at the top of the tracker are not B&H folks in their outside stock deals.) It was good of you to share how well B&H works for you. Hopefully the Officials at TSP will note your comments, along with your experience, without discrimination toward the request we posters are making for One More IFT, if youplease!!
 
I agree that 2 transfers a month is not optimal, a third one would be very useful.

Additionally, I would like to point out that we may soon need to tackle another problem: making sure nobody gets access to our TSP money. If I had my druthers I would not allow anyone else into the TSP program to complicate it. No additional brokers, no Fed, etc.
 
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