TSP Military Calculator

Under the Blended Retirement System, the government automatically contributes 1% of your basic pay to your TSP every pay period, whether or not you contribute anything yourself. On top of that, it matches your own contributions dollar-for-dollar on the first 3% of basic pay you put in, then fifty cents per dollar on the next 2% (the 3%-5% band). Once you have two years of service, contributing 5% or more captures the full match; contributing less means leaving part of that match on the table.

Because BRS matching is capped at 5% of basic pay contributed -- the government's total contribution (the automatic 1% plus the match) reaches its maximum, 5% of basic pay, exactly when you contribute 5% yourself. Any dollars you contribute above that 5% threshold still grow in your TSP and still count toward your own savings, but they no longer pull in additional matching dollars from the government.

Service members under the older Legacy (High-3) retirement system receive no government TSP matching or automatic contributions at all -- every dollar in a Legacy member's TSP account comes from their own paycheck. BRS, which applies automatically to anyone who entered service on or after January 1, 2018 (and to earlier service members who opted in during the 2018 opt-in window), adds the automatic 1% and the matching described above on top of whatever the member contributes.

It's a rough planning estimate, not a guarantee. The calculator applies the "4% rule" -- withdrawing 4% of the projected balance annually, divided into monthly payments -- which is a widely used retirement-planning heuristic but assumes a specific mix of market returns and withdrawal discipline that may not hold for every retiree. It also assumes your annual return stays constant every year until retirement, which real markets never do.

No -- this calculator applies your monthly contribution and the BRS match formula directly without checking it against the IRS annual elective deferral limit that caps how much can go into a TSP account each year. If your monthly contribution times twelve would exceed that annual limit, the real-world result would differ from this projection, so treat very high monthly contribution inputs as illustrative rather than something you could actually contribute in full.