Live tracker · Federal retirement
The TSP Lifecycle funds move you from 99% stocks to 28%
The TSP Lifecycle funds are eleven fixed blends of the same five individual funds, rebalanced daily, and their allocations run from 99.2% in the three stock funds for L 2075 down to 27.8% for L Income. Those weights are not published in machine-readable form anywhere, so the table below is derived from 120 trading days of daily returns, with a worst fitting error of 9.1e-5 a day, and we ran that derivation on 10 September 2026.
Share prices verified on 10 September 2026 against the plan's own file 11 funds, 5 different start dates
The glide path
How much of each L Fund sits in stocks
Share of each Lifecycle fund held in the C, S and I funds combined. The funds furthest from their target date hold almost nothing else, and the schedule moves that into the G and F funds as the date approaches.
What each fund holds
The full allocation table for all eleven Lifecycle funds
Percentage of each L Fund held in each of the five individual funds. Rows sum to 100 by construction, because the fit constrains them to.
| Fund | G | F | C | S | I | Stocks | Started |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| L Income | 66.8 | 5.4 | 14.4 | 3.5 | 9.8 | 27.8 | 2005 |
| L 2030 | 38.7 | 6.0 | 28.9 | 7.1 | 19.3 | 55.4 | 2005 |
| L 2035 | 27.8 | 6.3 | 34.3 | 8.5 | 23.1 | 65.9 | 2020 |
| L 2040 | 21.5 | 6.8 | 37.3 | 9.3 | 25.1 | 71.7 | 2005 |
| L 2045 | 16.2 | 7.1 | 39.9 | 9.9 | 26.9 | 76.7 | 2020 |
| L 2050 | 11.4 | 6.9 | 42.5 | 10.6 | 28.6 | 81.7 | 2011 |
| L 2055 | 0.6 | 0.4 | 51.6 | 12.8 | 34.7 | 99.0 | 2020 |
| L 2060 | 0.5 | 0.5 | 51.6 | 12.8 | 34.7 | 99.0 | 2020 |
| L 2065 | 0.4 | 0.5 | 51.6 | 12.8 | 34.7 | 99.0 | 2020 |
| L 2070 | 0.2 | 0.6 | 52.0 | 12.6 | 34.6 | 99.2 | 2024 |
| L 2075 | 0.3 | 0.6 | 52.0 | 12.6 | 34.6 | 99.2 | 2025 |
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 the glide path costs
The five-year return ran from 6.0% to 11.2% a year
Trailing five-year annualised return for every L Fund old enough to have one. These windows are identical across funds, unlike the since-inception figures further down, so this is the comparison that means something.
The ordering is exactly the ordering of the equity weights, which is what a well-built glide path should produce and is worth confirming rather than assuming. Over the five years to 9 September 2026 the spread between the most and least aggressive fund came to 5.2 points a year, and compounded across a decade that is a large difference in ending balance for a decision most participants make once by picking the date nearest their retirement.
Where that ends is the part worth looking at directly. L Income holds 72.3% between the G and F funds, and those two returned 0.43% and 0.57% a year after inflation between May 2003 and July 2026. Since every L Fund rolls into L Income at its target date, that allocation is where a participant who never touches their account finishes, and close to three quarters of it sits in assets whose real return over the last two decades rounds to very little.
None of which makes the design wrong. Trading expected return for lower variance is the entire purpose of a target date fund, and a participant who held 99% in stocks through 2008 while drawing an income would have had a materially worse retirement than one who did not. The point of putting the number on it is that the trade is usually described as prudent rather than priced, and it has a price.
The full record
Returns over every window, with the length of each
The since-inception column is not a ranking and should not be read as one. The eleven funds began on five different dates between 2005 and 2025, so that column compares a 21-year record against a 14-month one.
| Fund | 1 year | 3 years | 5 years | Own record |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| L Income | 9.0% | 8.9% | 6.0% | 4.8% over 21.11y |
| L 2030 | 13.9% | 14.2% | 8.2% | 7.6% over 21.11y |
| L 2035 | 15.6% | 15.4% | 8.7% | 11.5% over 6.19y |
| L 2040 | 16.6% | 16.4% | 9.1% | 8.3% over 21.11y |
| L 2045 | 17.4% | 17.2% | 9.4% | 12.8% over 6.19y |
| L 2050 | 18.3% | 18.0% | 9.8% | 10.4% over 15.61y |
| L 2055 | 21.7% | 20.9% | 11.2% | 15.7% over 6.19y |
| L 2060 | 21.7% | 20.9% | 11.2% | 15.7% over 6.19y |
| L 2065 | 21.7% | 20.9% | 11.2% | 15.7% over 6.19y |
| L 2070 | 21.7% | n/a | n/a | 19.6% over 2.12y |
| L 2075 | 21.7% | n/a | n/a | 22.7% over 1.19y |
Trailing windows are located by date rather than by counting rows back, because the number of trading days in a year is not constant and a row count would silently measure a different window for a fund that missed a print. A fund younger than the window shows n/a rather than an annualised figure drawn from a shorter one.
How we derived this
tsp.gov renders its Lifecycle allocation table in the browser and publishes no machine-readable version of it, so there is nothing to fetch. What it does publish is the daily share price of every L Fund alongside the five funds they are built from, and each L Fund is a fixed blend rebalanced to its target at the end of every trading day. That makes an L Fund's daily return an almost exact linear combination of the five core returns, and the weights recoverable.
We fit each fund's last 120 daily returns against the five core funds by non-negative least squares, with the weights constrained to sum to 100%. The worst fitting error across all 11 funds in this run was 9.1e-5 a day, which is rounding on a four-decimal share price. The job refuses to publish at all if that error rises above 0.001, because a blend that is no longer a constant combination of the five funds means something changed and the number should not go out unchecked.
These are our figures, not the plan's. Treat them as a close reconstruction of the published targets rather than as the targets themselves, and check tsp.gov if a decision turns on the second decimal place.
Sources
- Thrift Savings Plan, share price history, retrieved 10 September 2026
- Thrift Savings Plan, Lifecycle funds, rebalancing and roll-in rules, 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
The Digest Perspective
The default lands almost three quarters in the two funds with no real return
· Gold IRA Digest Editorial Team
Every L Fund eventually becomes L Income, and L Income holds 72.3% between the G and F funds. Those two returned 0.43% and 0.57% a year after inflation over the last two decades. A federal employee who picks the fund with the date nearest their retirement and never looks again is choosing, without being told in these terms, to finish with most of the balance in assets that have historically preserved purchasing power and not much more.
That is a defensible thing to want. It is not the same as what most people think they are getting when they choose the option the plan describes as professionally managed, and the gap between those two is worth closing before somebody else closes it for you with a sales pitch.
The strongest argument against us
The glide path is doing its job and the alternative is worse for most people. Holding 99% in stocks into a fall like 2008 while drawing an income does permanent damage that no subsequent recovery repairs, and the L Funds rebalance quarterly for free, which is a discipline almost nobody maintains by hand. None of that argues for moving the money into metal, which charges a custodian fee and a depository fee against a balance regardless of size, rebalances nothing, and pays no coupon while you wait.
What we would actually check
Whether the fund you are in matches when you will actually start withdrawing rather than the year you turn 65, because those differ for most federal and military careers. Whether the L Fund is the whole portfolio or one part, since 72% in G and F reads very differently alongside a pension than it does alone. And whether the number that prompted this is a real return or a nominal one, because a statement only ever shows the second.
We are not a licensed adviser and none of this is a recommendation to buy.
Questions
TSP Lifecycle fund questions
What do the TSP Lifecycle funds actually hold?
Each L Fund is a fixed blend of the same five individual funds, rebalanced to its target at the end of every trading day. There is nothing in an L Fund that a participant could not build themselves from G, F, C, S and I. L Income currently holds 66.81% G, 5.44% F, 14.44% C, 3.55% S and 9.76% I, while L 2075 holds 99.2% in the three stock funds. These weights are derived from the daily prices rather than copied, because tsp.gov does not publish them in machine-readable form.
Do the TSP Lifecycle funds cost more than the individual funds?
No. tsp.gov states the L Funds do not have separate expenses, so what an L Fund costs is the weighted average of the five funds inside it. Across the whole range that works out between 0.034% and 0.051% a year, which is $34 to $51 on a $100,000 balance. The rebalancing is free, and doing it yourself across five funds would take a transfer every quarter.
Which TSP Lifecycle fund should I be in?
The plan's own answer is the fund whose date is closest to when you expect to start withdrawing, and that is a reasonable default. What the table on this page adds is what each choice currently costs in expected return. Over the five years to 9 September 2026 the range ran from 6.0% a year in L Income to 11.2% in L 2055, a spread of 5.2 points a year, and that spread is the price of the lower variance rather than a mistake in the design.
What happens when a TSP Lifecycle fund reaches its target date?
It stops existing and the balance becomes part of L Income, which then holds it at roughly the same allocation indefinitely. tsp.gov gives L 2030 rolling into L Income in 2030 as the worked example. That makes L Income the eventual destination of every L Fund, and its 72.3% in the G and F funds the allocation most participants will finish in without ever choosing it.
Can I roll a TSP Lifecycle fund into a gold IRA?
The balance can move like any other. A direct rollover sends the money from the plan straight to the receiving custodian and no tax is withheld, while 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 it lands in a self-directed IRA the purity rules apply, so bullion has to meet the fineness standard in section 408(m) and sit at an approved depository rather than at home. What an L Fund gives that a metal holding does not is a rebalancing schedule somebody else runs, and that is the part worth pricing before giving it up.
The five funds an L Fund is built from have their own records: G Fund, F Fund, C Fund, S Fund and I Fund. All five side by side are on TSP returns since 2003. Vesting, the Roth split and spousal rights over the account are on TSP rules.