The TSP Retirement Countdown Checklist
The move from federal employee to federal retiree turns on a short list of decisions and deadlines. Miss the timing on any of them and the cost is real: months of delayed paperwork, a surprise tax bill, or a portfolio still built for a paycheck that has stopped. This is that list, in plain English, split into the three windows that matter.
Print it. Tape it somewhere you will see it. Every item below is something retiring feds tell us they wish they had handled sooner. It is education, not investment advice, and ThriftTrading is independent of the TSP, the FRTIB, and any government agency.
The Long Runway
Five Years Out
Enough time to fix things deliberately instead of scrambling. This is where the biggest levers still move.
- Request your official retirement eligibility date and annuity estimate from your HR office. Estimates take weeks; corrections take months. Start the paper trail now.
- Check your beneficiary designations. Your TSP beneficiary form overrides your will. If you married, divorced, or had children since you filed it, it is probably wrong.
- Look up your High-3 trajectory. If a promotion or locality change is possible, understand how the timing affects your FERS annuity.
- Review your allocation against your timeline, not your habits. The mix that built the account is not automatically the mix that should carry it into withdrawal years.
- Learn the sequence-of-returns problem before it can apply to you. A bad market in your first two retirement years does more damage than the same market in year ten.
- Confirm what your Roth and traditional balances are. The split determines your tax flexibility later, and five years is enough time to change it deliberately.
- If you carry a TSP loan, build the payoff plan now. An unpaid balance at separation is treated as a taxable distribution.
The Approach
One Year Out
Decisions become paperwork with deadlines. The goal now is to arrive at your date with nothing improvised.
- Submit your retirement application 60 to 90 days before your date. Interim annuity payments are partial; late paperwork stretches the gap.
- Decide your withdrawal method before you need the money: installments, partial withdrawals, annuity purchase, or leave it growing. Changing course is allowed, but starting with a plan beats improvising.
- Get the stay-or-rollover question settled on your terms. Compare TSP's costs and the G Fund against an IRA's flexibility, and be suspicious of anyone whose paycheck depends on your answer.
- Map your income by month for year one: FERS annuity (including the interim-payment period), the FERS Supplement if eligible, and what the TSP must cover.
- Set your tax withholding intentionally. TSP withholding defaults are not personalized and surprise people at filing time.
- Verify your service record is complete: military deposits, part-time service, breaks in service. Missing records found late delay everything.
- Build the cash buffer. Most retirees want one to two years of planned TSP withdrawals somewhere safe, so a bad first market year never forces selling low.
The Transition
Your First 90 Days Retired
The paycheck has stopped and the systems are catching up. Confirm, don't assume, and set the habits that carry the next 30 years.
- Confirm your interim annuity payments arrive and note what portion of the full amount they represent.
- Make your first TSP withdrawal deliberately, not reactively. Confirm the tax withholding on it matched what you set.
- Recheck beneficiaries one final time now that your employment status has changed.
- Revisit your allocation as a retiree, not an employee. Your risk capacity changed the day the paycheck stopped, whether or not the market noticed.
- Watch the calendar on the FERS Supplement earnings test if you plan to work at all.
- Put a market-drop plan in writing while markets are calm. Decide now what you will and will not do in the next 20% decline. The plan you make in advance is the only one you will trust in the moment.
These three windows are the spine of a larger decision. The what is on this page; the why behind each choice (sequence-of-returns math, the honest stay-or-rollover comparison, the withdrawal-method trade-offs) is where the money is actually made or lost. We cover that in depth in our free TSP tools and subscriber guidance.
Summarized from tsp.gov and TSP participant materials. Rules, tax figures, and RMD ages change; when in doubt, confirm against tsp.gov before acting. This page is education, not investment advice, and is not personalized to your situation. ThriftTrading.com is independent of the TSP, the FRTIB, and any government agency.