Federal Thrift Savings Plan Funds

[tbooks...@gmail.com]

According to the Washington Post (July 17, 2006), 3.6 million U.S.
government employees have retirement money invested in one of the ten
funds of the federal Thrift Savings Plan (TSP). It would be a
comparative advantage for Google Finance to permit users to include
these funds in their portfolios; I know of no other website (e.g,
Yahoo! Finance) that does so. Most TSP funds track other indices, so
one can work around the problem by manually calculating the equivalent
share holdings, but this is tedious.

[Sarah]

You're incorrect. Both federal employees and the military use the
Thrift Savings Plan.

Yahoo Finance does permit this in their portfolios , however you have
to know the appropriate symbols.

The symbols used for the funds include:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=%5ESPX,EFA,%5EDWCP,AGG&d=s

(SPX=C fund, EFA=I fund, DWCP=S fund, AGG= F Fund)

To see the G fund tracked each day in a chart, you could visit
http://www.tspmoney.com

BTW, there are now many pay services available to assist you with your
TSP allocations so that you may increase returns. These include TSP
Pilot, TSP Key, Thrift Trading, TSP Go, the TSP Report, TSP Max, TSP
Advisor, TSP Advisory, TSP Talk, TSP Wealth, et. al.

It can get confusing and expensive. Which is the best? Are any of
them worth the cost?

Some friends and I started a Yahoo Discussion Group to review this
information and try to increase our TSP returns. It's called TSP
Strategy. The group is free to join and no one is making any money
from it, other than what we make in our TSP.

Besides discussing TSP investment strategies, the group also tracks our
members' allocations on a monthly basis. We've been obtaining some very
excellent returns, generally exceeding those of even the paid services,
which we also track.

If you'd like to check us out, we're at:
[http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TSP_Strategy/]

Much success with your TSP..

[jjb...@gmail.com]

Sarah,

Maybe its just my ignorance, and/or glaring stupidity but I notice
an almost complete lack of sense in your response to tbooksellers
comment. And speaking of which, I agree with you tbooksellers, it
would seem to be an advantage not only to said service provider, but to
all us busy TSP members who wish for a bit more automation along with
compatibility. Moving on... Sarah, I encourage you to try your link,
or even to manually enter your fund symbols into Yahoo Finance. They
aren't the same funds!!! The closest you can come to real time
tracking (based on my half assed research), is to look at the
respective index that each fund tracks (which seems to be your plan
with the symbols). This will only give you an idea of how well (or not
well) your fund is doing. For that method I would change a couple
things. For the C Fund, try ^GSPC for the symbol in yahoo finance, and
.INX in Google finance. I would also like to point out that the
ishares ETFS that you are recommending Sarah while similar, it is
important to keep in mind that with the TSP you have automatic dividend
reinvestment which will throw you off the indices. Now, enough
criticizing, I just happen to have some productive input. I track my
funds in Microsoft Money 07. I manually enter everything in myself. I
split my paycheck to include a pretax deduction to an account I call
TSP(Cash) twice a month. Next I find out what day my deduction was
deposited into my tsp account, simply by waiting 24 hours after my
paycheck hits the bank (accounting for weekends and holidays). Now I
manually update the prices of each of my funds to the prices they were
at when the deposit was made (transfer from TSP(Cash) to my actual
investment account.. and yes this does require some simple math). Now
if at any time i want to see where I stand, i simply get the most
current prices of the shares, and I manually update it. Anyway sorry
for the massive soliloquy. I hope this helps.

[Sarah]

jjb...@gmail.com wrote:
> Sarah,
>
> Maybe its just my ignorance, and/or glaring stupidity but I notice
> an almost complete lack of sense in your response to tbooksellers
> comment.

jj, I'd be glad to respond if I understood your question. If you could
clarify the "lack of sense"
issue I might try to assist you....

> Sarah, I encourage you to try your link,
> or even to manually enter your fund symbols into Yahoo Finance. They
> aren't the same funds!!! The closest you can come to real time
> tracking (based on my half assed research), is to look at the
> respective index that each fund tracks (which seems to be your plan
> with the symbols). This will only give you an idea of how well (or not
> well) your fund is doing. For that method I would change a couple
> things. For the C Fund, try ^GSPC for the symbol in yahoo finance, and
> .INX in Google finance. I would also like to point out that the
> ishares ETFS that you are recommending Sarah while similar, it is
> important to keep in mind that with the TSP you have automatic dividend
> reinvestment which will throw you off the indices.

I agree that these symbols aren't exact but to my knowledge, they are
the closest approximations. If you could illustrate for me how your
symbols are better approximations, I'd appreciate it.

[jjb...@gmail.com]

Sarah,
That is a very considerate way of expressing your concern for my
disagreement. I appreciate your maturity. I just read over my reply
to your original comment, and I cant help but feel that I was
offensive. I have no excuse, just an apology. I apologize for
criticizing without being completely clear that it most definitely
reflected the situation as I saw it, and probably not how it was. So
anyway getting back on topic. Please allow me to skip over my "lack of
sense" comment as it serves no purpose other than to berate, and I hope
at this point to show my lack of eloquence and maturity. I feel that
the symbols I chose are better approximations, because for me they
work. When I type in SPX in yahoo finance, I get 'spx' is not a valid
ticker symbol ("^SPX" works). When I type in ^GSPC, I get S&P 500
Index . However, where ^GSPC does not work in Google Finance, .INX
does. Aside from that, I notice small disparities between the iShare
managed ETF's that are tracking indices, and the actual indices. One
could speculate that since Barclay manages the TSP funds, and iShares'
ETF's, that the TSP invests in said ETF's, instead of a different funds
tracking the same indices. Aside from these ideas, and the ones I
talked about before, I believe this expresses my point of view on the
subject almost completely. I hope this is what you were looking for
Sarah. Also by the way, I joined your group and I am so far impressed.
Thank you for your service.

Sincerely,
Jacob Barde

[Sarah]

Thank you Jacob. I appreciate your response and your kind words. And
thanks for joining the group. We're all trying to learn from each other
in our quest for larger TSP returns.

[Kevin McMahon]

Here here, please allow us to input TSP data into our portfolios!

If you guys fix this along with allowing an "automatically reinvest dividends" option, google finance would be a one-stop shop for me!

[hopkin...@gmail.com]

Here is a way to get real-time TSP prices into your Google Doc spreadsheet:

http://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=141547