Spouse is on a week of active duty at the "Homeland Security Planner" seminar. (Guess where the Reserves are finding their money these days.) It's about as exciting as it sounds, but the students include civil-service staff as well as active-duty & Reserve officers.
She was chatting with one of the civilians when she realized that he used to be a submarine lieutenant who'd separated after eight years. He said that he stayed on active duty for his total obligation, no Reserve time required, so that he could make a clean break from the military and start a civil-service career. When she told me about him that evening, I was curious how he transferred his military Thrift Savings Plan account over to his civil-service TSP account. (I know that enlisted veterans used to be able to buy some sort of civil-service pension credit with their enlisted service, but I don't know if that applies to officers or TSP accounts.) So spouse asked him the next day what he had decided to do with his military TSP account.
He responded with the following "famous naval saying": "Oh, I didn't put anything in the TSP during the last eight years. I can find better places to invest my money."
When asked what those asset classes would be, his response was "Well, I haven't sorted that out yet, but I didn't see anything in the TSP that I wanted to put my money into."
Ooooooookay. Must've been a helluva [-]mercenary[/-] nuke too.
Well, anyhow, he's achieved what he was looking for-- a clean break from the military. Hope he does better in the civil service, although I'm not holding my breath...
But I'm still curious. Anyone know if officer veterans can transfer their military TSP accounts if they've become federal civil-service employees, or do they have to leave that military account compounding away while they start a second civil-service TSP account? And can former officers use their active-duty service to somehow buy time toward a civil-service pension?
She was chatting with one of the civilians when she realized that he used to be a submarine lieutenant who'd separated after eight years. He said that he stayed on active duty for his total obligation, no Reserve time required, so that he could make a clean break from the military and start a civil-service career. When she told me about him that evening, I was curious how he transferred his military Thrift Savings Plan account over to his civil-service TSP account. (I know that enlisted veterans used to be able to buy some sort of civil-service pension credit with their enlisted service, but I don't know if that applies to officers or TSP accounts.) So spouse asked him the next day what he had decided to do with his military TSP account.
He responded with the following "famous naval saying": "Oh, I didn't put anything in the TSP during the last eight years. I can find better places to invest my money."
When asked what those asset classes would be, his response was "Well, I haven't sorted that out yet, but I didn't see anything in the TSP that I wanted to put my money into."
Ooooooookay. Must've been a helluva [-]mercenary[/-] nuke too.
Well, anyhow, he's achieved what he was looking for-- a clean break from the military. Hope he does better in the civil service, although I'm not holding my breath...
But I'm still curious. Anyone know if officer veterans can transfer their military TSP accounts if they've become federal civil-service employees, or do they have to leave that military account compounding away while they start a second civil-service TSP account? And can former officers use their active-duty service to somehow buy time toward a civil-service pension?