Social Security and the Thrift Savings Plan

Federal employees already have a retirement plan that has performed very well over the last 15 years. This plan is called the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP). President Bush stated the "Personal retirement accounts should be familiar to federal employees, because you already have something similar, which lets workers deposit a portion of their paychecks into any of five different broadly based investment funds."

Federal Employees are currently offered the choice of five funds. These funds include: a government securities investment fund, fixed income index investment fund, Common Stock Index Investment Fund, Small Capitalization Stock Index Investment Fund, and the International Stock Index Investment Fund.

The 10-year compounded returns for these funds range from around 5.5% for the international and government securities fund, to almost 12% for the common stock fund and the small cap stock fund.

For the past 10 years the average funds expense ratios have been 0.1% or less. This is an extremely good expense ratio for a mutual fund. Mutual funds with lower fees take less of their investors profits. Fees can significantly reduce the return gained from mutual funds over the holding period of many years.

All of your representatives and senators that oppose the investing of your social security taxes are most likely investing in the very funds that you would be investing in.