TSP Breakroom Talk

Brad: Does anybody find breakroom investment advice entertaining, or is it just me? I'm always hearing about recommendations that come from a coworker, a brother-in-law and uncles, brothers, sisters, great aunt, all kinds of people. I want to give you my thoughts on what federal break room investment advice might look like.

Fed: I get frustrated seeing my Thrift Savings Plan fluctuate. How about you guys?

Brother in law Bo: I just get advice from my brother-in-law he's super smart. Plus he always stays at a holiday Inn.

Fed: Really? What's he do for a living?

Brother in law Bo: He's a truck driver, but he told me get out of the stock market March.

Fed: Nice. When did he get back here?

Brother in law Bo: Well, we're still waiting to get back in right now.

Fed: So you lost 20%. And now the market's up 10% for the year. If you stayed in and you're still sitting on the sidelines.

Brother in law Bo: I mean, if you put it that way. Yeah. I guess that's true. But the bottom hasn't hit yet.

Conservative Carl: Well, people always told me that as I get closer to retirement, I need to have all of my money in the G fund. Okay.

Fed: But the G fund doesn't even keep up with inflation. Right.

Conservative Carl: But you don't want that money to fluctuate while you're in retirement?

Fed: Hmm. Why not?

Conservative Carl: I'm not sure.

Know it all Allan: So really what you need to do is you need to take your Sortino ratio times beta divided by standard deviation, and that will give you your sorbetiation. And then that's going to tell you all that you need to know.

Fed: What do have you been drinking? Man, can you smell it?

Brad: Everybody has an opinion about how you should invest and let's be honest. Most people throwing out investment advice like this have no clue [00:02:00] what they're talking about. So when it comes to TSP investing, I say, you do you and nobody else figure out what works for you and ignore the rest.

Brad Bobb, CFP®, owner of Bobb Financial Inc., is an expert in federal retirement planning.