Thrift Savings Plan Reviews

by Dougsv

In able to log in

by 2kla

Do not use ThriftSavingsPlan and move your money to a more competent organization, If we the customer work together and all transfer our money out of TSP, we are essentially firing the TSP board and contractor since there will be no more money left for them to mismanage.

App version 3.1.1 fails to operate properly and contains inaccurate information; example: App identifies a “year to date rate of return” but actually reports a rate of return to date since May 2022 vice 12 months as indicated. This is clear indication of a lack of competency by the contractor and oversight. Recommend you do not install, and do not use until corrected by a competent authority. Furthermore I recommend you contact your appropriate congressional oversight representative and demand an investigation into matter and to swift action towards those responsible for this abomination.

by Zorro2019$

Both ThriftSavingsPlan and the newly revised online website are an abomination, and the management team and TSP board members overseeing this “upgrade“ should be fired and given a lifetime prohibition from participating in any technology development project. The new website is actually much worse and less functional than any prior version and is a slap in the face to federal employees. (The flaws are too numerous for me to list, but other reviews shown here do a good job of summarizing them.) we waited a long time for a promised better user experience but were, in fact, given the opposite. Is it any wonder why retirees move their money out of the TSP? It is incumbent on the board to see that the deficiencies in both the website and app are corrected in a timely manner – but not before they hire a new and experienced management and development team.

by Jbmccl

I developed apps and websites professionally for major US Corps and NASA for 20 years and ThriftSavingsPlan fails in almost every primary function. It sends you in loops of generic information while never taking you to the important money management functions. Actually managing your accounts, positions, funds, and withdrawals should all be buttons or tabs on the menu. Even the site map does not take you to a place to manage withdrawals. I would fire any developer that brought ThriftSavingsPlan to me for delivery to customers. They should be using computer novices to test the easy functionally of ThriftSavingsPlan before publishing it. Response time was also ridiculously slow to the point ThriftSavingsPlan wanted to timeout before it resolved the request. What do they have for servers - a couple of desktops stuck in a closet? Totally unacceptable by 2022 standards.

by Srp920

Worst downgrade of a system I have ever seen. It spent hours almost every day for 5 months before they were able to find my account. They poorly transferred the old data (with no apparent review since they deleted my beneficiary and spouse information, incorrectly transferred my account and had many errors on my husbands account) and even customer service did not have access to our old data to help. I can no longer access my tsp on a computer unless I choose to buy a new computer and have to work on my phone. Information I could easily access on the old system is difficult to find if I can even access it. All historical data is missing.

Can we please admit this was a bad decision and revert back to the old system.

by Outastate

Sad attempt at an electronic system to manage life savings. I agree the requirement for 8 character favorites is counter productive. The fluff advertising of the “benefits” of the system that comes up first is distracting and unnecessary. Dump it and send the 2 people who want that fluff to an external website. I want to see the same information on the previous tsp (distribution/share costs/amounts/when) but it’s difficult if not impossible. I want access to my account when overseas without using phone services (text/phone) or app that’s non functional. My beneficiaries have disappeared although the confirmed paper version was complete. I wonder where the $ for development of ThriftSavingsPlan came from and who administered the contract. Scary to think the US Government has such a dismal management system and dismal contract over site! I don’t trust it after seeing ThriftSavingsPlan.

There should be a $ penalty in the contract for poor performance and lack of functionality. Same for whomever designed and administered the contract. I fear how this will be maintained over time…and how much of the waste will cost us as investors.

by XxRetired

This new website and app are a poor replacement for the previous system. Currently it’s not possible to change or cancel a current distribution online, one has to call the help line to request a change (currently wait times are typically 60 min or more), and then the transaction is done manually by someone else and takes 7-10 business days to be implemented. Previous system took 1 day. I received a June and July distribution I didn’t want. What kind of financial management is this? This option should have been tested and available when the system went online. And there is no explanation of this process for users, I wasted a lot of time searching for this option.

The website has all sorts of unnecessary fluff. It should service its existing users first, not advertise what’s possible. I want a simple table of balances and % in each fund. Option to view Table of current and past fund prices & fund performance.

The TSP made a poor choice in this new system. My experience with the transition, and the new layouts, have pretty much destroyed my confidence in the TSP built up over 45 years of participation.

by Squidward112

Pretty much concur with the majority of reviewers giving one star ratings. Navigation within ThriftSavingsPlan is clunky and slow, the information or detail you’re looking for is as difficult to locate and manage as it is on the redesigned webpage (which also happens to be remarkably unimpressive). I feel less secure rebalancing funds and money, let alone making transactions like withdrawals on ThriftSavingsPlan, all of which is also tricky on the webpage. And just to check in on your balance is a hassle as particularly annoying, as others have pointed out, is the lack of biometric log-in options. You have to use ThriftSavingsPlan with more current OS systems that you find in phones with biometric logins but it’s not available for ThriftSavingsPlan ? That’s pretty stupid. I’ve had to endure quite a bit of nonsense with other financial site redesigns the past few years; all these financial wizards are abjectly inept when contracting competent software designers. ThriftSavingsPlan (and the website it’s based on) are emblematic of this issue.

by HumbleBee2001

I was very excited when ThriftSavingsPlan was announced to be rolled out in June. And was equally disappointed the minute I downloaded ThriftSavingsPlan and tried to login.

ThriftSavingsPlan did not show full content on my phone in portrait, so all the navigation, filling out the initial sign-up, etc. had to be done in landscape. I thought it was a minor hiccup. Proceeded to signing up. Favorite questions require an answer that has to be at least six letters. Why? The purpose of “favorite” is because you can remember them. They are your favorites. And no one else knows about them (usually). If ThriftSavingsPlan is forcing you to make up stuff that is at least six-letters long, that’s not really my “favorite,” and chances are that I will forget about them. If the purpose is to write them down somewhere, that defeats the purpose of “favorites,” because, well, they are your favorites and you don’t have to write them down.

While navigating through the “favorites” questions, ThriftSavingsPlan decided to stop the process and go back to the home page. No explanation. No time-out message. No error message. I started the process again. To have ThriftSavingsPlan take me to the home page…again.

It is sad to see a government-sponsored app not even having the basic functionality. This is an app that one will (potentially) use for financial activities on their TSP account. Would I trust ThriftSavingsPlan to make error-free transactions? Well, I will find out if I can sign up successfully…in a few light years 🙂

by TheNoiseGuy

We all worked or have worked in the government or military and we all understand how IT contracts are awarded and managed.

The level of incompetency though, after all this wait for an “app” and in the year 2022, is just mind boggling. Whoever awarded and approved this contract should lose their job. The contractor must be immediately fired and replaced, even if it means ThriftSavingsPlan has to be taken down for a while a new contractor is hired and designs a new app. Knowing how our IT and purchasing departments work, I fear they’ll just try to make small fixes and incremental updates and in the process make things worse and more bloated. We need accountability because the money spent most likely came from the fees we have been paying all these years.

Too bad I cannot give ZERO stars. This must be the slowest app I have ever used. All important info is no longer easily accessible, you must dig 2-3 levels to find what you need. Tried AVA and it’s clunky and unusable.

by TickedOffRetiree

The new website and app are worse than before for retirees who need monthly post-retirement monthly withdrawals, and the poor folks answering the Thriftline have been given little information. I just spent 80 minutes on hold after being unable to find how to make an installment withdrawal modification on ThriftSavingsPlan and website. It took staff another 20 minutes to discover that retirees now have to phone the Thriftline to change the monthly installment amount. Worse, they provide no timeframe by which a change needs to be made. The script support staff is given is that any change in amount will be processed “as soon as administratively possible.” The ability to control how much I can withdraw is crucial for me in retirement as is the ability to change tax withholding, which also cannot now be performed on-line. The Thriftline staff does not know if functionality will improve. TSP needs to communicate with us about this degradation in functionality.

by Kwiley93

The government again proves how ineffective it can be. ThriftSavingsPlan is terrible. Everything you’d want or expect from a financial services app is missing or hidden. Instead of a simple design with a menu or tabs, ThriftSavingsPlan randomly suggests quick links to its website.

And the most glaring issue is with the one thing it seems to have gotten right… the balance information. When you first log into your account, you can immediately see your total account value with what appears to be a normal graph charting your historical gains and losses. Except for some reason, TSP decided to present the information in the most misleading way possible. The parameters of the chart are distorted to make nominal gains value appear equal to large losses. For example , in a six month look back, the upper limit of the Y axis may represent +6%, while the lower limit may represent -14%. Here, TSP is either intentionally misleading its users or willfully ignorant to its own deceptive practices.

by Rculler

Though ThriftSavingsPlan is basically a port of the abominable NEW TSP website, it proves to be even worse! Most of my complaints like others here refer to the basic dysfunction of website including the inability to access historical data prior to May of 2022. I am unable to even get an accurate prior year report for 2021 for tax purposes. ThriftSavingsPlan and the website it links to are supposed to be the access point for thousands (millions?) of Federal employees into retirement their system and as usual their needs have been ignored in favor of a poorly researched contractor. Unlike other app developers here who are dependent on reviews for revenue, there are no responses to the myriad complaints from users of ThriftSavingsPlan or the parent website.
To my specific complaints about ThriftSavingsPlan :
1. It is incredibly slow and unresponsive. Maybe a byproduct of being an extra layer to the website
2. Like the website, it is not particularly user friendly for the purposes one needs. Touting itself and trying to sell users on the new mutual fund option instead.
3. Some functions just don’t work. Keyboard doesn’t appear for certain text entry options. Cannot download files attached to the secure emails.

I am a Federal retiree and I urge all my fellow current and past employees to contact your Congressional representatives to let them know that this isn’t working.

by Sasnis

Did they even try?! Aside from being able to quickly seeing what your balance is, the whole rest of ThriftSavingsPlan (and new site) seems like trash. Very slow, sometimes 15-20 seconds between certain screens and that’s with a good connection. It shows you what your investment amount is but trying to find how individual other funds are performing is impossible. The only funds it shows are the ones you’re invested in. I shouldn’t have to leave ThriftSavingsPlan and go to google just to find out what the G, C, XYZ, etc funds are doing today. I’m pretty sure a middle school student with decent tech skills created ThriftSavingsPlan and site for how basic and not user friendly it is. It is functional I’ll give it that…as in it doesn’t crash. The old website with every single bit of TSP info on the very first screen, and anything else you wanted only 1 click deep, was much more user friendly.

by Thrash1952

ThriftSavingsPlan is a very poor design. It is extremely clunky and confusing. Nothing is laid out in any sensible fashion. It seems to be nothing more than a pass through app as in it passes you through to their web page for anything other than viewing your balance. Their check scan feature is the only reason I downloaded ThriftSavingsPlan and it doesn’t work correctly. With the camera systems on new phones the image quality we have is amazing. ThriftSavingsPlan will scan your check with such great quality but when it converts the image to the submission format it will turn the image black and white. This takes pretty much any check and makes it have such terrible quality that it is not legible. This results in your check getting constantly kicked back until the point of having to mail it in.

Don't even bother with ThriftSavingsPlan….

by Tomes JT

I have been waiting for many years for TSP to join the 21st century and roll out an acceptable app. However, this was a good idea and poor execution. I cannot even seem to log in anymore via ThriftSavingsPlan only through the website.
When I was able to use ThriftSavingsPlan the functionality is like a read only mode, which is pretty useless. The ideas about integrating education are good but again horrible execution, the mini quizzes don’t even work properly. You don’t know what the correct answer was intended to be. The USG needs to bring in the digital service to help support this. Service members and federal employees deserve better than what my parents local bank can do and have been doing on their application for 15+ years.

There is tremendous opportunity for improvement. Fire the current prime and subs on ThriftSavingsPlan development and bring in a scrappy developer company to come in and fix it.

by DKxxxxx

ThriftSavingsPlan is as poorly designed as the web site. In fact I’m convinced all ThriftSavingsPlan does is takes you back to the website because it looks exactly the same. Absolute garbage. Only the government could get away with this. Lost all my annual statements which really doesn’t matter since I’m not able to open the pdf quarterly statements. I know it’s not my iPad because I have no issues opening pdf documents in any other app or website I use. ThriftSavingsPlan just seems to take you in circles and you seldom end up where you want to go. If you do, you’ll never figure out how to get there again unless by mistake. I don’t want to hear you’ll get use to it in time, I won’t. I don’t access it enough to commit the stupidity of this to memory. All this new app and website did was convince me to move my money the first opportunity I have.

by Chriscman

The old site was bad, but this… No access to data from before the transition? That’s just gone? I don’t get to know what my career of saving looks like because I didn’t make my own record of it before tsp deleted it? It’s just confusing how bad this “update” is. If the only thing you want is the exact balance as of yesterday, then I guess ThriftSavingsPlan is for you. If you’re interested in literally anything else, you’re in for a lot of pain. Whoever was in charge of this must have pocketed huge amounts of money. I’m sure this was pitched in meetings and well funded, but the result looks like they gave a mediocre middle school kid $20 and two weeks. They have access to so much data on funds, contribution types, agency matching, dates, etc. So much opportunity to give insight on performance, growth, metrics; but no, just a slow, hard to navigate site with as little information as they could possibly display.

by Tdifgh

I downloaded ThriftSavingsPlan to use the check scan for a contribution rollover. This feature is an available feature in most, if not all, banking apps. I’ve scanned and submitted my rollover check multiple times and keep receiving messages through the TSP inbox that the check must be resubmitted due to poor quality. Mind you, ThriftSavingsPlan snaps the photo of the check automatically like most mobile deposit features do. Now I have to mail the check in. The only reason I downloaded ThriftSavingsPlan was for that feature which CLEARLY does not work. The other aspects ThriftSavingsPlan offers are completely irrelevant as there is no benefit of using ThriftSavingsPlan opposed to the website. I was skeptical of the 1.3k 1 star reviews but it is indicative of the quality of ThriftSavingsPlan. DO NOT DOWNLOAD.

by Brendaneatworld

It’s not an app. It’s a web browser. A web browser that doesn’t even work on a mobile device. If you want to access your TSP, use a desktop/laptop. If you try to use the “app” or another mobile browser, it’s going to completely ruin your day and you aren’t going to be able to do what you’re actually trying to do. One of those “if I could give it zero stars, I would” situations.

I tried to give them a couple months to work out kinks, but this is getting ridiculous. Old website wasn’t very good either, but at least you could do what you needed to do. AND I could do it from my cellphone. Crazy right? At the end of the day, who really needs access to the money they’ve been saving for retirement? TSP really dropped the ball on this.

by Punahou78

I almost never review apps. I am compelled to do so because the Thrift Savings Plan has a lot of my money — and a lot of money of other federal employees. Wcustomers deserve much better TSP Board needs to read this review and do something. ThriftSavingsPlan is a disaster for this reason: for those rolling money into the TSP, ThriftSavingsPlan is touted as the effective/efficient way to send TSP the rollover distribution check, avoiding the need to mail or overnight the check. I have tried to scan and upload my distribution check 4 times within the past week. Each time, TSP had informed me the check is “illegible” and must be scanned and sent again.

I have used mobile check depositing apps at several financial institutions over the years and have never had a problem lile this. Thus, I strongly suggest that TSP revise its app to fix the mobile-scanning feature of ThriftSavingsPlan.

by G Wrangler

I waited a bit before rating because I hoped my initial shock and anger at how poorly ThriftSavingsPlan and new website were designed would fade with time and familiarity. There is no sense in re-iterating the numerous failures and frustrations described by others here, but I would like to acknowledge that once I ran through the ridiculous maze of link-loops, dead end paths, endless open spaces, useless fluff, and learned to navigate directly to the information I wanted (my current balance and current individual fund price), the process was pretty painless. As of now, my biggest complaint is the lack of Face ID or similar authentication. Since I am able to get the information I want I’ll give it 3 stars, but design-wise it sorely needs some improvement.

by Hesohilfiger

Forget the old reviews, ThriftSavingsPlan is great. I love that I’m able to easily and quickly access my TSP information through ThriftSavingsPlan. I can view my balance, performance, contribution details, and much more all with ThriftSavingsPlan . Before this, I had to wait for something in the mail or try to go online to a website that I always forgot the password to. Which when I had to reset it, the temp password came in the mail.

I’m not sure what the other reviews are complaining about but it’s more than likely that they were made in ThriftSavingsPlan ’s infancy and before updates were made. The government did a great job providing this resource.

by Ruff Ruff 1

Before I downloaded ThriftSavingsPlan I read some of the reviews, especially the one star reviews. I have no idea why folks are panning ThriftSavingsPlan . I’ve navigated to some of the features such as Withdrawals and Change Investment Mix and though it’s slow to navigate it gets you there. I did not fully explore the features to the end as I have no need to withdraw nor do I want to change my investment mix but ThriftSavingsPlan is simple enough to navigate. It just works as far as I’m concerned. I do suggest that you create your updated TSP account via the TSP website before downloading and using this mobile app. Once set up on the website the transition to mobile is easy. It even prompts for the two factor authentication that folks seem to think doesn’t exist.