Your TSP’s stock and bond funds: Which is safest?

When people go into something like the Thrift Savings Plan, they think of it as a long term investment. Most believe that things like the bond-index F fund and the treasury securities G fund are the safest. Most also concede — and the long term numbers bear it out — that stocks outperform bonds over time. But what about the F fund out performing the G fund? If that’s the case, and the numbers show it to be true, which is the safest?

Financial planner Arthur Stein says that “safe” is a relative term. And he also says many feds don’t understand that their TSP retirement nest egg is not really an investment. He’ll be my guest today on Your Turn. Stein has lots of clients who are feds, active and retired. Some of them have more than a million dollars in their TSP account. Here’s the guest column he wrote to explain the “investment” part of your TSP.