Can You Transfer Your TSP to an IRA? An Ultimate Guide to Rollover TSP

Can you transfer your TSP to an IRA? Have you ever asked yourself that question? Well, you do not have to look for answers anymore because we might be able to help you. The Thrift Savings Plan is a great retirement plan for people in the armed services and federal employees. However, the investment opportunities in TSP are strict and limited. That is why you might want to consider transferring your TSP to an IRA. And here are some of the things that you need to consider before doing that.

How to Transfer Your TSP to an IRA?

1. Evaluate Your Options

The first thing that you need to do is to evaluate the transfer choices that you have. If you ever decide to do a rollover of your TSP, you need to know that you have four choices. First, you can keep all of your savings or some of your savings in the TSP. You can also transfer some assets to a new employer’s plan. Other than that, you can also transfer your TSP funds to an IRA. Lastly, you can cash out your TSP balance. With this information, you need to decide what you want to do. If you want to transfer your TSP to an IRA, you will have to learn the TSP rollover process.

2. Minimizing Taxes Tips

Taxes can be a pain when you are doing a rollover of your TSP fund. That is why you need some tips to minimize taxes. So, let’s say that you decide to do a TSP rollover to an IRA. You can choose to do a rollover to a traditional IRA as well as a Roth IRA. To minimize taxes, you should do a rollover from a Roth to Roth or traditional to traditional. So, if you have a traditional TSP account, you should do a rollover to a traditional IRA account as well. The same thing goes to Roth accounts. Can you transfer your TSP to an IRA? Yes, but you need to know how doing it in the best way.

3. Always Think Twice

Of course, you always need to think twice before deciding to do a rollover. However, this is especially important if you want to do an indirect rollover. A direct rollover is generally safer. All you need to do is to tell the TSP to send your assets directly to a new employer’s plan. You are not going to handle the money. However, with an indirect rollover, you are going to take full responsibility for the transfer. This can be risky so you have to be careful.

4. Can You Transfer a Thrift Savings Plan into an IRA? Be Careful of “No Fee”

The last thing that you need to consider is to be careful of several claims such as “No Fee”. A lot of companies out there advertise for their rollover services. However, the advertisement can be highly misleading. That is why you need to pay a lot of attention if you want to work with a certain financial firm.

You might want to transfer your TSP to an IRA account for several reasons. Well, you can easily do that if you know how to do it. However, you need to consider several things before doing that. That way, you will be able to know other things besides the answer to can you transfer your TSP to an IRA.