Your TSP annual and quarterly statements provide a snapshot of your account activity. It’s important to review them thoroughly each time you receive them to identify any errors or unauthorized activity, and to see if you’re on track to meet your savings goals.

Here are a few terms you might come across when looking at your TSP statements:

Adjustments—The net amount of reversals of certain transactions.

Excess Deferrals—A contribution that exceeds the elective deferral limit in a particular year.

Forfeitures—FERS and BRS employees who leave federal service before they are vested in the TSP forfeit the Agency/Service Automatic (1%) Contributions and earnings on those contributions. If a forfeiture occurs because of agency payroll error, the affected participant is entitled to have those forfeited funds restored to his or her TSP account.

In-Service Withdrawals—If you’re an active federal employee or a member of the uniformed services, you can make two types of in-service withdrawals from your TSP account: financial hardship and age-based. Read more about making In-Service Withdrawals.

Loan Disbursements—An amount removed proportionally from any traditional (non-Roth) and Roth balances in your account. Similarly, if you are a uniformed services member with tax-exempt contributions in your traditional balance, your loan will contain a proportional amount of tax-exempt contributions as well. If your TSP account is invested in more than one fund, your loan is deducted proportionally from the employee contributions (and earnings on those contributions) that you have in each fund.

Redesignations—Contributions that have been removed from your traditional balance and put in your Roth balance, and vice versa, to correct agency or service contribution submission errors.

Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs)—The Internal Revenue Code (IRC) requires that you receive a portion of your TSP account beginning in the calendar year when you become age 72 and are separated from service. The portion is called a Required Minimum Distribution (RMD). Learn more about RMDs.

Transfers/Rollovers—Money coming into your TSP account from an eligible retirement plan, or from a TSP-to-TSP transfer when you combine uniformed services and civilian TSP accounts. Transfers out of the TSP would be shown as “Post-Separation” or “In-Service” withdrawals.

Vesting—Being “vested” means you’re entitled to keep all of the money in your account. Vesting only applies to Agency/Service Automatic (1%) Contributions (and their earnings) and occurs after you work in the federal government or uniformed services for a certain number of years. Read more about vesting.

If you have questions, call us on the ThriftLine. We’re here to help.