How TSP interfund transfers work

Two kinds of move

The regulation describes two ways to move your existing balance. A fund reallocation redistributes the whole account across the funds you choose. A fund transfer moves money out of one or more funds into others and leaves the rest alone. Both count toward the monthly limit in the same way.

Changing where new contributions go is a different choice (a contribution allocation) and is not a transfer. The backtester models moves of the balance you already hold.

The monthly limit

You may make 2 unrestricted transfers in a calendar month. After that, G Fund only, until the next calendar month. A move into the G Fund is always allowed, so a plan can sit in stocks for part of a month and step into G before month end even after its two moves are used.

The count is kept by posting date, not by the day you submitted the request. A request made late on the last business day of a month that posts the next business day counts in the next month.

When a request takes effect

• The cutoff is 12:00 noon Eastern Time on a business day.
• A request received before the cutoff posts on the same business day; one received at or after it posts on the next business day.
• Your money moves at the share price of the posting date. You never know that price when you submit, because it is set after the market closes.

What counts as a business day

A TSP business day is any calendar day for which share prices are calculated. In practice that is every weekday the New York Stock Exchange is open, except that the TSP also skips Columbus Day and Veterans Day, when the stock market trades but no share price is set. The dates in the official price file are the final word, and this site's calendar is built from them.

Days with no share price in the year ahead, from the NYSE calendar plus the two TSP-only days, are listed in the rules file this page is built from (24 dates on file).

How the backtester follows these rules

• Every move is placed on a TSP business day and is filled at that day's closing share price, which is what a request before the cutoff gets.
• A plan may hold at most 2 moves into funds other than G in any month; moves into the G Fund alone are unlimited. The editor will not let you build a plan the rules forbid.
• A move into a mix of funds (for example half C and half S) is bought once and then drifts with each fund's price until the next move, which is what happens in a real account.
• A day that does not exist in a given year, such as the 20th business day of a short month, falls back to that month's last business day and the result says so.