 Hi guys. Welcome back into the Independent Investor Channel. My name is Ryan. I do these periodic reviews. I don't do them very often at the Thrift Savings Plan for you guys that are military members, both reserve and active duty component, as well as civilian employees that are eligible to contribute to the TSP. This testimonial is one that I offer that drops you right into my specific account, the specific allocation, explain a little bit about the aesthetics of the Thrift Savings Plan website. Yes. But also to explain a little bit about the top end managed funds as well as the lower end self directed funds, that of which I'm involved in specifically. Stay tuned. I'm going to drop you into the account and we're going to check the performance here over here and check my allocation and kind of explain some of the features and functions within the Thrift Savings Plan platform. Guys, stay tuned. So this is an opportunity to jump into the Thrift Savings Plan. This is made available to military, all military and government civilian employees. This is part of the government pension program for a lack of better terms. It's an investing opportunity that is very, very streamlined, very, very simple in its application. They've made it that way on purpose and it's a great, great program. And it really is. It adds a first layer of any investor's opportunity. So if you are in fact out there and you are a military member, number one, or you're a government employee and you do have access to the Thrift Savings Plan, then you can benefit immensely from tutorials like this and really see how I've been able to build up a program within the TSP, at least get an introduction to the aesthetics of the Thrift Savings Plan website, which they've just recently revamped. I think they've done a really good job of streamlining it. They cleaned up some of the access protocol, which was absurd for a while. But this is the front page of the TSP here, which identifies the managed aspect up on the top here with the YELL funds going all the way to L2065. That's the target date for retirement quasi-retirement date being defined as the date that you would maybe need to access this money, not necessarily this target date that's identified. But I don't participate in the life cycle funds. I am an advocate of them. I think they're great for anybody who wants to engage on the strategy of passive investing. I do. This is a very, very low cost. This is managed by BlackRock. Very low cost opportunity to enter into these, put it on autopilot and forget about it. My understanding is that now, for the blended retirement system, your funds that are coming out of your paycheck automatically are going into a life cycle program, which I think is a step in the right direction. For many, many years there have been a lot of service members and government officials alike who have unknowingly been contributing to the government securities fund, which is the G fund. And statistics show as high as 50% of people were subject to that ill-advised funding and cost themselves some performance over time. But I digress and this is my account here. You guys can see here the allocation that I've got at the bottom, the contribution allocation, which means that when dollars flow into this account every two weeks, 75% of those dollars will flow into the C fund. Now the C fund is the S&P 500. I'm not going to get into the specifics. You can actually go up here and find fund information within the TSP if you are in fact eligible to contribute to. But these two graphs at the bottom here show this is the dollar cost average funding schedule, the contribution allocation. That's a fancy way of saying dollar cost averaging, which is another fancy way of saying these are the dollars that flow into the account every two weeks. And so this doesn't change. Now the account distribution can change a little bit over time based on the performance of each individual fund. Okay, so even though I've asked this target allocation to be set at 70%, we're a little underweight here at 69.68, not too shabby. Now these are self-directed accounts on the bottom here. I do a very, very simple allocation to these accounts and you can see how these have changed a little bit over time. But the bottom line here, just over 46,000 here, this was started in 2011. So I've owned this for about 10 years. So it helped you gauge a little bit if you're a new military member or a government employee, etc. And you're looking to get started. You can kind of see what's possible. I started with a 2% contribution and I'm currently doing 10%. A lot of people do a lot more than that. A lot of people do a lot less. I used kind of a phase in type of approach to my TSP opportunity and it worked for me because at the time I didn't have the extra money to contribute to this program. And I've increased it over time as I've moved up and the salary has increased and some of that discretionary surplus income has increased over time. And I've been able to up that contribution. It right now sits at 10%. You can see here the PIP over the last 12 months, 33.53%, doesn't get any better than that. You want to be an investor? This is a great way of adding that specific layer. I will say that the strategy that I deploy on this is 100% passive. I do not mess with this. I invest in it and I let it go. This is an investment that I took a stake in. I have before transferred funds and I know a lot of people ask me about that. I think that that's a futile effort and I think for the most part most people will end up damaging their portfolio if they're opting to always try to time the market and say, okay, well, I want to go to the safety of the G fund. The market will turn right around and continue to go up on you. So don't try to get too cute with it. Just set it and forget it. And I've done very, very well by opting for that level of strategy. I will also say to jump in and really talk about this, I always cover this as super, super important in that most of these contributions go into the member Roth. And I will say it again, most of these contributions go into the member Roth. I am on the Legacy TSP program. I was ineligible to opt into the blended retirement. I would not have anyway for my own personal reasons. But I am legacy and I am legacy by nature of no decision put to me to opt into anything different than, but I've been doing the member Roth since the beginning. So I started this when the member, the TSP Roth, the Roth TSP came online and I've been doing it ever since. So keep in mind, these are tax protected dollars within this member Roth. So I always try to kick over here and show you how important that aspect of the portfolio is. But this is the baseline, okay? This portfolio may get up above 100, 250. But I don't know where this account is going. I don't really care. I'm deploying a strategy within this and it's 100% passive and it is an aspect of my total comprehensive portfolio. I don't mess with this. I deploy one specific strategy and that's good enough for me. But for you guys that are looking at the prospects of the TSP, hopefully this helped you introduce the aesthetics of the website, what's possible, the difference between the life cycle funds and the individual self-directed funds, and what these DCA contribution models and the account to break down actually provide to you in way of information. So with that, we'll kick you back and we'll conclude the video. All right, guys. Fantastic. We've come out of the Thrift Savings Plan Review. The real nuggets and takeaways to understand that this is just one of multiple layers in my total comprehensive portfolio. I would encourage each and every person that has eligibility to contribute to the TSP to do so. It's a great way to build wealth over time with very little effort. All you really need to do is establish the allocation that you choose and fund it up over time. And it's performed very, very well for me in a relatively short amount of time. If you could have $50,000 in less than 10 years, would you do it? And I think that's the golden question that a lot of people need to answer. And I haven't been contributing to this at 10% for very long as disclosed in the video I've contributed to start 2% of my pay. The $50,000 that I wouldn't have missed otherwise now have been able to grow into a fairly sizable amount and look into scale that to the masses. Because I think a lot of people would be attracted at the prospects of having some net wealth and the Thrift Savings Plan and really resonating with the testimonial that I provide through the example that I do. If you appreciate the content and make sure and subscribe, leave your comments at the bottom of the video and share this message with those government employees active duty and reserve military component out there that are eligible to the TSP. Don't know much about it. Let them know I'm sharing the message through social media they can come consume the content free of charge and get some awesome information about how it can perform over time. And more importantly, how it can relate in your life guys. Thank you so much for tuning into the message and good luck in your investment future.