Background: AF O-3E hitting 14 TIS in 2026 and most likely pinning on O-4 late 2026 early 2027
Maybe I’m just lazy but I’m failing to see the benefit of having to do the mental gymnastics trying to monitor yearly pay increase, even year TIS pay increase and promotion pay increases. I have no matching due to high-3 so the only maybe benefit I see in making sure the contributions have an even peanut butter spread is for paycheck continuity (which doesn’t happen anyway every other year as my pay date for TIS lives in the middle of the year)
Am I missing something?
Any point in trying to hit TSP max on the last pay period? (High-3)
byu/ChartInteresting inMilitaryFinance
Posted by ChartInteresting
6 Comments
Nope, there’s no real difference for the legacy system folks. There are some reports of DFAS not catching when they needed to shut off annual contributions, but it ends up being a correction within a month or two.
I try to max out early so I don’t have to worry. They’ll stop contributions when you hit the cap
I made a spreadsheet that tells me what to do for the year. I usually contribute like $500 less than the max but this year I’ll adjust the spreadsheet to see when I need to adjust my contributions and by how much.
I’m a prior enlisted O on the legacy plan and I value maxing it out every single year. The math isn’t hard but does require some calculations and planning. What I did as an LT was set my contributions to 25% Roth TSP. It wasn’t enough to max then but close. Once I pinned CPT I was maxing it out easily every year at 25%. I continue to leave it at 25% even as I get yearly and TIS pay increases. Now it’s fully maxed out by EOM pay in NOV.
In the end, a few hundred bucks off a year from the max isn’t really a big deal. We get a larger pension than the BRS folks, but that extra few hundred over the course of 20-30 years will compound into 10’s of thousands.
If there’s no matching it doesn’t really matter when you hit the max. That’s ignoring market deviations, of course, but there’s no advantage to be gained except for a few more months in the market if you go in early.
I spread it out evenly because of dollar cost averaging. But other than that I don’t see the difference.