personal finance
Finance Friday Articles
- $1,776 ‘Warrior Dividend’ Tax-Free, IRS Confirms
- Check your order before you wreck your order
- From Broke to Multi-Deca-Millionaire – Lessons Learned from 42 Years of Investing
- How to invest your next dollar
- I Want to Invest in Real Estate, But I Also Want to Be Totally Lazy About It: What Are My Options?
- New Law Will Preserve Value of VA-Issued Life Insurance
- Picking the Right Waiting Period (Elimination Period) for Disability Insurance
- Should You Stop Working When You Become Financially Independent?
- Stupid Debts and Their Doctors
- The Things We Never Talk About
- TSP Summarizes Policies, Considerations for Roth Conversions
- Understanding the ‘Military Buy Back’
- What happens to my TSP account if I die?
- What should I do if I overfund my 529 plan?
- Why Are Credit Card Rates So High?
- Why You Can’t Time the Market (Even When You Know the Future)
Finance Friday Articles
- Historical Returns For Stocks, Bonds, Cash, Housing & Gold (2025)
- Is Home Equity Fake Wealth?
- Multiple 401(k) Rules – What to Do with Multiple 401(k) Accounts
- nobody knows anything a.k.a. how to trade the market in 2026
- The 10 eternally true steps to financial freedom
- The Probability of Loss in the Stock Market
- Updating My Favorite Performance Chart For 2025
- Where Americans Choose to Move and Where They Leave
- Why Do People Partially Engage with the Financial Services Industry?
Finance Friday Articles
- 6 Surprises From 2025
- 25 Lessons on Money and Meaning
- 2025 Bogleheads Conference Videos Rolling Out
- 2025 Investing Lessons
- Almost all companies with a 401(k) now allow Roth savings — here’s who benefits
- Babies will get their $1,000 ‘Trump accounts’ in 2026 – along with tax complications
- Building a Bond Ladder with Individual Bonds and ETFs
- How Much Do Real Doctors Actually Save for Retirement?
- I Fund Leads in Third Straight Strong Year for TSP Stock Funds
- Is a House Still a Good Investment Right Now?
- Physicians Quick-Start Guide to Personal Finance
- Q4 2025: Markets continue to climb a wall of worry
- Real Life Experience with a Deferred Fixed Annuity (MYGA)
- Tricare After Active Duty: What Actually Happens to Your Health Insurance
- TSP Announces Schedule for Tax, Other Notices
- What’s a Safe Retirement Withdrawal Rate for 2026?
- What to know about the new Trump accounts for kids
- Your Future Self Is a Stranger — Here’s How to Change That
Finance Friday Articles
- 4 Tips for Managing Money After the Military
- Beware Of Maslow’s Hammer
- Decluttering as a Financial Strategy
- For TSP, 2026 Brings Higher Investment Limits, In-Plan Roth Conversion Option
- How to Buy Life Insurance
- Medicare, TRICARE Price Increases and Tax Changes for 2026
- Why Physicians Should Retire as Multi-Millionaires
- Why we’re underweight stocks
Finance Friday Articles
- 6 Simple Ways to Improve Your Investment Performance
- Building confidence for the great wealth transfer ahead
- Concentrate to Get Rich (or Poor)
- Does Money Buy Happiness? What the Research Really Says
- Early Access: Legally Avoiding Penalties on TSP Money
- Flat-Fee Planning for Physicians, and Why the AUM Model Deserves a Second Opinion
- High stock valuations and a case for bonds
- How scammers exploit investor emotions and instincts
- How to Avoid Getting Scammed
- How to Beat the 4% Rule
- Know a Veteran Facing Financial Trouble? These Resources May Help
- Myth vs. Reality: Rethinking Common Financial and Lifestyle Assumptions as a Physician
- Problems I Have with the Die with Zero Philosophy
- Roth or Tax-Deferred Contributions: It Depends on Existing Balances!
- SPY vs. VOO: Which S&P 500 ETF Should You Choose?
- The 4% Rule and Safe Withdrawal Rates
- The Risk You Aren’t Thinking About
- Truth, Lies, and Hype: Sorting Through the Messaging Around Real Estate Investing
- TSP Roth in-plan conversions available 28 JAN 2026
Finance Friday Articles
- 2026 IRS Roundup: New Limits for Retirement Plans, Plus Brackets and More
- Four ways financial advice delivers true value
- How to Become a Moderate Millionaire
- IRS outlines details for Trump accounts
- Making 7 Figures in Medicine in a Decreasing Reimbursement Landscape
- The Best Hedge
- Vanguard’s economic and market outlook for 2026
- Vanguard’s New Target Retirement Lifetime Income Funds
Finance Friday Articles
- 30 Ways to Buy Time
- 2026 outlook: Economic upside, stock market downside
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- Boring Investing Still Works
- Disability Insurance Misconceptions: Common Assumptions Physicians Can’t Afford to Make
- How to Never Run Out of Money in Retirement
- Investing and Tax Planning Come Last
- Investing for the Long-Term
- My Favorite Investment Writing of 2025
- Protect Your Investment Portfolio from the AI Bubble
- Tax Update: Retirees in These States Will See Changes in 2026
- The Astonishing Bull Market Will End One Day. Are You Ready?
- The Best Financial Books for Teens, as Noted by a Teen Who Loves Finance and Reading
- The Housing Affordability Crisis
- What We Learned When Our Tenant Was Arrested on Drug Charges
Finance Friday Articles
- 5 Reasons Why Bitcoin Crashed—And Why It Could Fall Further: Deutsche Bank
- 2026 Changes to Charitable Giving Tax Deductions Due to OBBBA
- Discounts for Doctors and Healthcare Workers in 2025
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- I’m Leveraged to the Gills at Nearly $2 Million! Watch Me Swim
- The 4 Year Rule For Retirement Spending
- The Peter Bernstein Rule: Beware Empty Memory Banks
- The Truth About Whole Life Insurance
- TSP Strategy: Sticking to a Plan vs Guessing the Market
- What a classic beer ad reveals about the high-yield market today
Finance Friday Articles and Changes to TSP Catch-Up Contributions
- 10 Things We Can Learn From Warren Buffett That Have Nothing to Do With Money
- Are U.S. Stocks Running Out of Steam? A Deep Dive into Valuations and Market Concentration
- Being a First-Time Mom and a New Attending Surgeon: It Can Be Done
- I’ve heard about avoiding early withdrawal penalties with the ‘Rule of 55.’ How does it work?
- Launch of Roth In-Plan Conversion Feature for TSP Participants and Beneficiaries
- Retirement is a Sprint, Not a Marathon
- Vanguard Backdoor Roth Tutorial
Also, here is a note I got from the TSP:
Upcoming changes to catch-up contributions in 2026
If you’ll be age 50 or older in 2026, you are eligible to make catch-up contributions to your TSP account. These contributions are additional savings allowed above the IRS elective deferral limit. In 2026, participants age 50 and older can contribute an extra $8,000 in catch-up contributions on top of the $24,500 elective deferral limit, for a total contribution limit of $32,500. (For participants ages 60 to 63, the IRS catch up limit is higher—$11,250—which makes the total contribution limit $35,750 for this group.)
Starting January 1, 2026, a new rule from the SECURE Act 2.0 (provision 603) may change how you make those catch-up contributions.
What’s changing
Under the new rule, if your wages from the prior year exceed the IRS threshold ($150,000 for 2025), the IRS requires any catch-up contributions you make in 2026 go into your Roth (after-tax) TSP balance—not your traditional (pre-tax) TSP balance. If you don’t have a Roth TSP balance, the first Roth contribution will automatically create one.
How this may affect you
- If your prior-year (2025) wages exceed the threshold and you make only traditional (pre-tax) contributions: Once you reach the IRS elective deferral limit of $24,500, any additional contributions you make will automatically switch to Roth (after-tax) TSP and go into your Roth TSP balance to satisfy the IRS requirement—there’s nothing you need to do.
- If you make both traditional (pre-tax) and Roth (after-tax) contributions during the year: Once your combined contributions reach the $24,500 elective deferral limit, any Roth contributions you make—or have already made—will count toward satisfying the IRS requirement that your catch-up contributions be Roth up to the $8,000 catch-up contribution limit. You can continue contributing to your traditional balance until your traditional contributions reach the elective deferral limit. If your total traditional contributions reach the elective deferral limit, any additional contributions you make will automatically switch to Roth.
- If you prefer not to make Roth catch-up contributions: You can stop your contributions once your traditional contributions reach the IRS elective deferral limit of $24,500 before those contributions automatically become Roth. However, you will need to restart your contributions the following year if you wish to continue saving.
- If you made less than the threshold ($150,000 in 2025): This change does not affect you.
- If you’re a uniformed services member and earn tax-exempt pay while serving in a combat zone: Your contributions toward the catch-up limit must be Roth regardless of your prior year wages. (The TSP cannot accept traditional tax-exempt contributions toward the catch-up limit.)
Learn more about making catch-up contributions and see scenarios to help you understand how the new rule applies based on your age, income, and contribution choices.
Note: IRS thresholds and limits are subject to change and are updated annually for inflation.
How to determine prior year wages
The IRS uses FICA wages from the previous year—typically found on your W-2. Only wages from TSP-eligible federal positions count toward the threshold. Wages from non-federal jobs are not included.
Questions?
Visit catch-up contributions or call the ThriftLine at 1-877-968-3778. You can also chat with a ThriftLine representative through our virtual assistant, AVA, during business hours.
Sincerely,
Your TSP
Finance Friday Articles
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- Roth in-plan TSP conversions
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- The Economics of a 50 Year Mortgage
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