Questions, answered honestly

No. MyFederalFuture is a private, independent educational resource. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the U.S. government, the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP), the FRTIB, OPM, or any government agency.

Nobody here works for the government, and we don't speak for it. For official rules and current figures, go to tsp.gov.

It's free to you. There's no fee, and there's nothing to buy on this site.

Here's how we're paid, plainly: if you ask to speak with someone, we introduce you to a state-licensed insurance professional, and that professional pays us a referral fee. You're never charged, and you're never obligated to do anything.

No, and no. MyFederalFuture is an educational and marketing company. We are not a licensed insurance producer, not a broker-dealer, and not a registered investment adviser.

We don't sell financial products and we don't give financial, tax, legal, or investment advice. What we do is explain your options in plain English, and — if you want one — make an introduction.

A state-licensed insurance professional who works with federal employees. They are independent of MyFederalFuture — they don't work for us, and we don't work for them.

They have paid us a referral fee for the introduction. We think you should know that before the conversation starts, not after.

No — and be wary of anyone who says they will before knowing your situation.

We're an educational resource, not a financial adviser. We help you understand what the five options are and what each one does. The decision is yours, and any product discussion happens with a licensed professional, not with us.

It's the name of our educational framework — the order we walk through the decision in, so nothing gets skipped.

It is not a product, an account, an investment, or a guarantee of anything. It's a way of organising a decision. You can read the whole thing on the guide page.

It's a conversation, not a presentation. You walk through where you stand — your system, your service years, your timeline, roughly what your TSP is invested in — and the licensed professional walks you through how the five options apply to a situation like yours.

It's free, there's no obligation, and you're free to end it at any point. If it isn't useful, that's a perfectly fine outcome.

Because it shapes the conversation. The questions that matter for a balance of $80,000 aren't the same questions that matter for a balance of $800,000.

It never gates anything. There's no minimum, and everyone can take the readiness check regardless of what they answer. A range is enough — we don't want exact figures.

Only if you ask us to and give consent. Consent isn't a condition of taking the readiness check, seeing your results, or anything else on this site.

If you do opt in and change your mind, reply STOP to any text message to opt out, or email us at hello@myfederalfuture.com. Message and data rates may apply.

We collect what you tell us: your readiness-check answers and your contact details — name, email, phone, and state.

Be clear on this part: if you ask for an introduction, your information is shared with the licensed professional you're introduced to. That's the whole point of the introduction. Our full Privacy Policy spells out what we collect, how it's used, and how to ask us to delete it.

No. Please don't send them. Ranges and rough figures are enough to have a sensible conversation, and we don't ask for TSP account numbers, Social Security numbers, or login details.

That's still fine, and arguably it's the better time to look. Timing shapes the conversation rather than disqualifying you from it — "retiring next year" and "retiring in eight years" are genuinely different discussions.

The one thing worth avoiding is learning your options while you're under time pressure with paperwork already filed.

In brief: (1) leave it in the TSP; (2) take installment payments; (3) take a lump sum, full or partial; (4) use the TSP's lifetime income option, purchased through its outside provider; (5) transfer or roll it over to an IRA or another eligible plan.

Each one does something different, and each one costs you something different in flexibility or taxes. We walk through all five in the guide and in more depth in this article.

No. Leaving your money in the TSP is one of the five options, and for many federal employees it's a sound one. It keeps the TSP's fund lineup and its low administrative costs, and it avoids making an irreversible decision while you're busy retiring.

We're not here to talk you out of the TSP. Anyone who treats "leave it where it is" as an obviously wrong answer is telling you something about their incentives, not about your situation.

You're still welcome here. Some of the five options are still open to you after separation, and understanding what you chose — and what it means going forward — is worth doing either way.

If your money has already left the TSP, some doors have closed. That's worth knowing plainly rather than discovering later.

That's not a question we'd answer for you, and it's not one anyone should answer without knowing your situation. The G Fund does a specific job, and whether that job matches what you need depends on your other income, your timeline, and your temperament.

What we'd push back on is the framing. The G Fund gets used as a rhetorical punching bag in a lot of marketing aimed at feds. Understand what it does and doesn't do, and judge it against your own circumstances.

tsp.gov for the TSP itself, and OPM for your pension and retirement processing. Those are the authoritative sources for current rules, figures, and forms.

Anything on this site is general education. When the two disagree, they're right and we're wrong.