Clear Money Guide
Guide and tool overview
See the questions covered here, then open the interactive utility.
Comparison tables scroll horizontally on smaller screens.
Updated August 2, 2026. Quick answer: the TSP is one of the cheapest investment vehicles that exists. Its C Fund cost 0.035% in 2025 — about $350 a year on a million dollars. The median advisory relationship we measured charges 87.5 to 100.0 basis points at that balance, or $8,750 to $10,000 a year, on top of whatever the funds cost. Rolling out is not wrong. It just has to be worth that.
What the gap is worth over a working retirement
On a $1,000,000 balance at 6% for 20 years, a 100 basis-point fee costs $580,107 of ending value. That is the honest headline, and it is also not the whole story — see below.
What the TSP actually costs
These are the TSP’s own published total expense ratios for 2025:
| Fund | Total expense ratio | Cost on $1,000,000 |
|---|---|---|
| G Fund | 0.034% | $340 |
| F Fund | 0.035% | $350 |
| C Fund | 0.035% | $350 |
| S Fund | 0.051% | $510 |
| I Fund | 0.048% | $480 |
The TSP describes it in per-dollar terms: “A participant with $1,000 invested in the C Fund paid 35 cents toward the fund’s expenses; a participant with $100,000 invested paid $35.” There is no fee to withdraw, no fee for installments, and no commission on the TSP annuity.
What advice costs, measured rather than asserted
We read the fee schedules of 176 registered investment advisers from their own Form ADV Part 2A filings, weighted to a screened frame of 9,234 firms. At a $1,000,000 relationship the median came out at 87.5 to 100.0 basis points depending on which end of a firm’s published schedule applies. The dataset is published in full: 10.5281/zenodo.21741167, and the report that came out of it covers the rest, including how many firms will not price a retail relationship at all.
What could honestly justify it
A fee is not a verdict. Some of what an adviser does has a measurable dollar value that can exceed the fee, and a federal career is unusually full of it:
- Withdrawal sequencing across three sources — annuity, TSP and Social Security interact through the tax brackets and later through IRMAA. Getting the order right is worth real money: the order itself, and what it does to Medicare premiums.
- Roth conversions in the window between retiring and RMDs starting, which is a once-only opportunity with a closing date.
- Not selling in a bad year. Unglamorous and genuinely hard to do alone.
- Survivor and beneficiary work that only matters once, and matters enormously then.
What does not justify it is fund selection. The TSP’s index funds are already at the cheap end of what money can buy; no one is going to beat them on cost, and a portfolio rebuilt out of similar index funds inside an IRA starts the relationship several thousand dollars a year behind.
Weigh the move against the rest of your plan
Whether to keep the TSP or roll it out turns on cost, the withdrawal options you want and what else you hold, and an adviser can price those together before a transfer is made.
Before you start, what actually happens. The form is run by Kapitalwise, our advisor-matching partner. Kapitalwise sends your details to advisers who pay for the introduction, so expect calls and texts. Clear Money Guide is paid when you submit the form, whether or not you ever hire anyone. This is free to you and there is no obligation to hire anyone.
The Kapitalwise form opens here. You stay on this page.
What happens when you press the button
It asks about nine questions (age, investable assets, location), then your name, email and phone number, and verifies the phone by text. Nothing loads and nothing reaches Kapitalwise until you press the button. Submitting the form does not guarantee an adviser or a match. This matching form is not tax or legal advice.
The three things that decide it, none of which is the fee
1. Age at separation. If you separated in or after the year you turned 55 and might need the money before 59½, an IRA rollover takes that access away — the penalty exception does not survive the move. That is a hard constraint, not a preference.
2. What you actually want to hold. The TSP has five core funds and the L series. If your plan needs something that is not in there, that is a real reason. If it does not, moving buys you nothing you did not have.
3. Whether you want a person. Some people manage this alone and sleep fine. Others do not, and paying for help they will actually use is a better outcome than saving the fee and getting the sequencing wrong. Both answers are defensible; only the unexamined one is not.
A middle path exists and is usually overlooked: keep the TSP and pay for advice by the hour or by the plan rather than as a percentage of the balance. Where flat fees beat a percentage puts the crossover point in dollars.
TSP expense ratios (2025, published at tsp.gov Expenses and fees) and the no-commission statement from tsp.gov; the advisory fee medians from our own reading of 176 Form ADV Part 2A filings, published as 10.5281/zenodo.21741167; the IRA penalty carve-out from 26 U.S.C. § 72(t)(3)(A). Read August 2026. The calculator is deterministic arithmetic on your inputs, not a projection, and this page is general information rather than advice.
If the pension is a federal one, the rulebook is its own: what the FERS annuity actually comes to (1% a year, 1.1% at 62 with 20 years, less five-twelfths of a percent for every full month under 62), and the separation choice that decides whether federal health insurance survives it.
Protection is a separate question from tax: a 401(k) and an IRA are not equally protected, and a rollover changes which rules apply — ERISA covers the plan in every state, while an IRA falls back on whatever your state provides.
If the pension is a military one: retired pay is 2.5% or 2.0% a year of your high-3, and Guard service divides points by 360 — and the survivor election has a statutory price rather than an insurer’s: what SBP costs and what it buys.
If someone is recommending the roll. Ask them the five questions on financial advisor for federal employees first — starting with what they are doing that the Lifecycle funds are not.
Rolling out while an order is pending is its own risk — what a divorce court order requires before you move anything.
What you would be leaving is defined by statute rather than by a fund company — what each TSP fund is actually required to hold.