Live tracker · Federal retirement
The TSP G Fund has never fallen and still lost to inflation in 7 of 22 years
The TSP G Fund closed at $20.1992 on 9 September 2026, up 3.07% a year since the plan restated every fund to $10.00 on 31 May 2003. It has fallen on 0 of the 5,812 trading days on record, and it still finished behind consumer prices in 7 of the 22 complete calendar years from 2004 to 2025. This page updates daily from the plan's own price file.
Share price verified on 10 September 2026 against the plan's own file 5,812 trading days since 31 May 2003
Share price
$20.1992Close on 9 September 2026
Since 2003
3.07%a year, nominal
After inflation
0.43%a year, May 2003 to July 2026
Years behind inflation
7 of 22Calendar years, 2004 to 2025
Falls on record
0In 5,812 trading days
Expense ratio
0.034%2025 total, $34 per $100,000
The record
The G Fund went from $10.00 to $20.1992 without a single down day
Month-end share price since the plan moved to a daily price and restated all five funds to $10.0000. The line only ever rises, which is the fund's entire proposition and the reason the section below it exists.
The chart resamples the daily file to calendar month-ends, because a line drawn from 5,812 points renders the same shape at roughly twenty times the page weight. Every return and inflation figure on this page is computed on the daily file rather than on this resample.
Weighing a move out of the plan? The match tool asks six questions about your account and shows the custodians that take a TSP, with their fee schedules, before anyone phones you. Start the match tool.
What it holds
The G Fund buys Treasury securities that nobody else can buy
The fund is not a bond fund and it does not behave like one, which is the part that gets lost when it is described as the conservative option.
The Treasury issues the G Fund a special short-term security that is not traded and is redeemable at par on any business day, so there is no market price to fall. The rate is reset once a month and fixed by statute at the weighted average yield of outstanding Treasury marketable securities with four or more years remaining to maturity, which means participants collect a long-dated yield while carrying none of the price risk that a long-dated bond carries.
That arrangement has no equivalent outside the plan. A money market fund holding Treasury bills earns the short end of the curve and moves with it. A Treasury bond fund earns the long end and takes the price swings that come with it, which is what the F Fund did when it fell 18.0% from its August 2020 peak. The G Fund takes the long-end yield and refuses the price risk, and no rollover destination reproduces it.
After inflation
The G Fund returned 0.43% a year after inflation
Every complete calendar year the fund and the Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U series both cover, December to December. The bars below zero are years the share price rose and the balance still bought less at the end of the year than at the start.
| Year | G Fund | Inflation | After inflation |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2004 | 4.30% | 3.34% | 0.92% |
| 2005 | 4.49% | 3.34% | 1.12% |
| 2006 | 4.93% | 2.52% | 2.35% |
| 2007 | 4.87% | 4.11% | 0.73% |
| 2008 | 3.75% | -0.02% | 3.77% |
| 2009 | 2.97% | 2.81% | 0.16% |
| 2010 | 2.81% | 1.44% | 1.35% |
| 2011 | 2.45% | 3.06% | -0.59% |
| 2012 | 1.47% | 1.76% | -0.29% |
| 2013 | 1.89% | 1.51% | 0.37% |
| 2014 | 2.31% | 0.65% | 1.64% |
| 2015 | 2.04% | 0.64% | 1.40% |
| 2016 | 1.82% | 2.05% | -0.23% |
| 2017 | 2.33% | 2.13% | 0.19% |
| 2018 | 2.91% | 2.00% | 0.89% |
| 2019 | 2.24% | 2.32% | -0.08% |
| 2020 | 0.97% | 1.32% | -0.35% |
| 2021 | 1.38% | 7.17% | -5.40% |
| 2022 | 2.98% | 6.40% | -3.22% |
| 2023 | 4.22% | 3.32% | 0.88% |
| 2024 | 4.40% | 2.87% | 1.49% |
| 2025 | 4.44% | 2.65% | 1.74% |
The real return compounds rather than subtracting, so a year of 1.38% against 7.17% inflation reads -5.40% rather than the -5.79% a subtraction would give. The difference is small in any single year and it accumulates across twenty of them.
The pattern that matters
The losses came 4 years in a row, from 2019 to 2022
A count of losing years understates this. Scattered across two decades, seven negative years is noise a long horizon absorbs. Arriving consecutively, they are a period, and a period lands very differently on somebody already drawing the balance down.
Between 2019 and 2022 the G Fund lost purchasing power every single year, and the compounded loss over that stretch came to 8.8%. The share price rose in all 4 of those years, which is what makes the run hard to see from a statement. A participant checking a balance in 2022 saw a number larger than the one they saw in 2019 and had lost close to a tenth of what it would buy.
The mechanism is not mysterious. The G Fund rate follows the weighted average yield on longer Treasury securities, and that yield sat near its floor through 2019 and 2020 while consumer prices did not. In 2021 the fund paid 1.38% against inflation of 7.17%, the widest gap in the series, because a rate set off yesterday's yield curve cannot respond to this year's prices.
Whether that is a reason to move depends on the horizon rather than on the run. A participant with twenty years ahead has watched the fund beat inflation in 15 of 22 years and can wait. A participant drawing $40,000 a year against a balance losing 5.4% of its purchasing power is in a different position, and the honest answer for them is that a single-asset answer of any kind is the wrong shape for the problem.
What it costs
The G Fund charges 0.034% a year, and all of it is administration
The fund has no investment manager to pay, because the Treasury issues the securities directly to the plan. That makes it the cheapest of the five funds and cheaper than anything a rollover can move it into.
The 0.034% total for 2025 works out at $34 a year on a $100,000 balance, checked against tsp.gov on 10 September 2026. Part of that administrative charge is met by the agency contributions that federal employees forfeit when they leave before vesting, which is a genuinely unusual funding arrangement and one the plan publishes rather than hides.
A self-directed IRA holding metal charges a custodian fee and a depository storage fee, and the two together commonly run $300 a year whatever the balance. On the same $100,000 that is roughly 9 times what the G Fund charges, before anyone buys a coin and before the premium over spot on that purchase. Read the fee comparison on what a gold IRA actually costs before treating a rollover as a lateral move.
Method
Returns are computed on the daily share price file rather than on the month-end resample the chart draws. The inflation comparison resamples the daily file to calendar month-ends before joining it to the CPI-U series, because joining a daily series to a monthly one on an exact date keeps only the coincidences and looks like a valid narrow window. Only calendar years both series cover completely are scored, so a part-year at either end is excluded rather than counted as a full one.
Sources
- Thrift Savings Plan, share price history, retrieved 10 September 2026
- Thrift Savings Plan, G Fund, holdings and rate method, retrieved 10 September 2026
- Thrift Savings Plan, expenses and fees, 2025 ratios, retrieved 10 September 2026
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, CPI-U, through July 2026
- LBMA precious metal prices, through August 2026
The full daily series for all five funds is available as CSV.
The G Fund is the column headed G.
The Digest Perspective
A fund that cannot fall is not the same as a balance that keeps its value
· Gold IRA Digest Editorial Team
The G Fund does exactly what the plan says it does. It has not fallen once in 5,812 trading days, it costs 0.034% a year, and a participant who wanted a balance that could not go down got one. The question this page exists to answer is what that guarantee is worth measured in what the balance buys, and the answer is 0.43% a year over 23 years.
Measured in gold the same period reads differently again. Gold compounded at 11.52% a year from May 2003 while the G Fund compounded at 3.06%, so a share that bought 0.0277 of an ounce at the start buys 0.0044 now, a fall of 84.0% in ounce terms. That comparison flatters gold and we are not going to pretend otherwise. It starts in 2003, near the end of a twenty-year bear market that had left the metal below its 1980 price, and a start date chosen a few years either side moves the answer a long way.
The strongest argument against us
You would be leaving the cheapest retirement account in the country to buy the most expensive way to hold a metal. The G Fund charges $34 a year on $100,000. A custodian and a depository together commonly charge $300, which is 9 times as much and does not scale down for a smaller balance. Add the premium over spot on the first purchase and the dealer's bid on the way out, and a rollover can be several percent behind before the metal has done anything at all.
What we would actually check
How close you are to drawing the balance down, because the 2019 to 2022 run is survivable at 45 and expensive at 68. What else you hold, because a reader whose problem is a bond-heavy allocation has an allocation problem rather than a metals problem. And whether the number you are reacting to is a real return or a nominal one, since the statement only ever shows the second.
We are not a licensed adviser and none of this is a recommendation to buy.
Questions
TSP G Fund questions
Can the TSP G Fund lose money?
In nominal terms it has not, and the count behind that claim is 0 falls in 5,812 trading days since 31 May 2003, because the fund holds Treasury securities issued specially to the plan and redeemable at par. In purchasing power the answer is different. It returned 0.43% a year after CPI between May 2003 and July 2026, and it finished behind consumer prices in 7 of the 22 calendar years from 2004 to 2025.
What is the TSP G Fund invested in?
Short-term US Treasury securities issued specially to the Thrift Savings Plan, which no other investor can buy. The rate is reset monthly and set by law at the weighted average yield of outstanding Treasury marketable securities with four or more years to maturity. That is why the fund earns a long-dated yield without taking the price risk that comes with a long-dated bond, and it is the reason nothing in the private market behaves quite like it.
What has the TSP G Fund returned?
3.07% a year since 31 May 2003, taking the share price from $10.00 to $20.1992 on 9 September 2026. Over the last ten years it has run at 2.95% a year and over the last one at 4.48%. After inflation the same record is 0.43% a year, which turns $100,000 left alone since May 2003 into $110,414 of May 2003 purchasing power rather than the $200,914 the statement shows.
Is the G Fund a good place to leave a TSP balance in retirement?
It depends entirely on the window. Across 22 calendar years the fund beat inflation in 15 of them, so the long-run answer is a small positive real return rather than none. The problem is that the losses cluster. Between 2019 and 2022 it lost to inflation 4 years running and gave up 8.8% of purchasing power over that stretch, which is the kind of run that lands hardest on somebody already drawing the balance down.
Can I roll the G Fund into a gold IRA?
The balance can move, but nothing about the G Fund itself comes with it. A direct rollover sends the money from the plan straight to the receiving custodian and no tax is withheld. An indirect rollover pays you first, withholding applies, and the full original amount has to be redeposited inside 60 days out of your own pocket. Once the money lands in a self-directed IRA the purity rules take over, so bullion has to meet the fineness standard set out in section 408(m) and sit at an approved depository rather than at home. What you give up is the Treasury security behind the G Fund, which is not available anywhere outside the plan and cannot be replaced by anything a dealer sells.
What does the TSP G Fund cost?
0.034% a year for 2025, which is $34 on a $100,000 balance, checked on 10 September 2026. All of it is the net administrative charge, because the fund has no investment manager to pay. That makes it the cheapest of the five funds and cheaper than anything a rollover can move it into.
The other four funds, their returns and what each one costs are on the TSP fund tracker. What you can do with the balance once you separate is set out on TSP rollover options at separation.