TSP countdown

Federal workers may celebrate May Day this year not by dancing around a maypole, but by analyzing their Thrift Savings Plan accounts. On May 1, just five days from now, two new investment options will become available to TSP participants. The I Fund, which will invest in international stocks, and the S Fund, which will invest in small- and mid-sized American companies, will join the three existing funds, giving federal workers a total of five choices in their 401k-style retirement savings plan. May 1 also is the first day that federal employees will be able to change the way their future TSP contributions are divided among the five funds at any time. Previously, changes to contribution allocations could only be made during the summer and winter TSP open seasons. Employees can change their allocations on the Web at www.tsp.gov, via the ThriftLine at 504-255-8777 or by mailing in Form TSP-50. The fun doesn't stop on May 1, however. On May 15, the summer TSP open season begins. During the open season, which runs until July 31, federal employees can change the total amount of money they contribute to their TSP accounts each pay period. During the open season, the percentage limit on contributions per pay period will rise from 10 percent to 11 percent of pay for Federal Employees Retirement System enrollees and from 5 percent to 6 percent for Civil Service Retirement System enrollees. For a discussion of making smart choices about contributions, see the April 12 Pay and Benefits Watch column, Understanding TSP contributions. But wait, there's more. During the open season, employees will be able to start rolling over money into their TSP accounts from former employers' retirement plans (such as 401k plans) and from Individual Retirement Accounts. And new employees will be able to begin immediate participation in the TSP. The newly employed used to have to wait until the second open season after they were hired to begin participating. For more information on the revamped TSP, see the new Summary of the Thrift Savings Plan for Federal Employees booklet and the May cover story of Government Executive, Risk and Reward. Retirement Worries As many as 20,000 federal employees may have been placed in the wrong retirement system since the Federal Employees Retirement System was established in the mid-1980s. Think you might be one of them? A Pay and Benefits Watch reader wrote in asking how he can find out whether he was placed in the wrong system when he was hired. "Our own personnel person is not confident I am in the correct retirement system," the reader said. If you're worried that you're in the wrong system, first read through the information on the Office of Personnel Management's retirement corrections Web site. Then call OPM's toll-free retirement corrections hotline at 888-689-3233, Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., EST. New Pay System Federal administrative appeals judges have a new pay system. The Office of Personnel Management issued the details of the new system in an April 19 memorandum. The new system sets the basic pay for administrative appeals judges at between $82,100 and $113,600 this year. Killing a Rumor There are no serious proposals to offer Civil Service Retirement System employees a sweet retirement deal to get them out of the federal government within the next few years. A decades-old rumor circulating on the Defense Department e-mail system in recent weeks is totally false. If you get the email about the retirement offer, delete it. It's just not true. Sorry.