I wasn't a high-grade fed, just retired at GS-11, under CSRS. For the last few years, I was maxing my TSP. That, of course meant my take-home pay was fairly low during those years. However, that's the level of income we got used to living on and it wasn't a problem. Wife works but only earns $24,000. She puts 30% of that into her 401k. Having said all that...my net CSRS retirement check per month is around $800 more than my pay when I was working. Wife is still working. I have not needed to take any TSP withdrawals yet. I feel like we got a raise when I retired. My net take-home is considerably more than my net take-home while working. We bought our retirement home a year ago, & just refinanced it last week at 3.5% fixed, which reduced the payment by $100 per month. I guess it all depends on what level of income you're used to working with. Currently our combined take-home pay (after all insurance incl. health, life & dental, taxes, survivor's benefits) is around $47,000 yr. That's pretty comfortable to us, and we can increase it by TSP withdrawals if we want/need to. In 3 yrs, wife will retire & I'll begin drawing my military retirement, which will replace her income almost exactly. At that time I will also have the option of going onto Tricare, & suspending current health insurance. Not sure I'll go that route but will consider it. In 5 yrs, I'll begin drawing around $3000 per yr SS (every little bit helps) and 3 yrs after that, wife's SS kicks in. We aren't wealthy, but I feel fairly secure with the 2 COLA'd pensions + TSP + her 401k. I've never done the math to see how I would fair under FERS vs. CSRS. When I was offered to switch to FERS, I figured it most likely was a better deal for the govt. than for me. Also, since I wasn't in FERS from the beginning, there were too many years of TSP matching that I had already missed out on.