You mention Roth TSP and traditional TSP, are you married to military so two TSP? I think I’ll be fine between TSP and my Roth IRA but just curious what you meant by that. And are you worried about going above the Roth IRA income threshold? I haven’t found a good game plan for that and $137k single/ $203k married doesn’t seem hard to surpass if becoming civilian pilot after if not promoted to 0-4
Not dual mil. My wife has had various jobs depending on our duty stations - everything from working for a corporate insurance company, to a dance instructor, to modeling, and now she's a part time (mayyyybe 12 hours a week) remote executive assistant basically doing admin work for the head accountant at a firm. I doubt she's brought in more than 25k in any year.
I'm saying max everything that you can Roth first while your income is relatively low:
For me that's my Roth IRA, my wife's Roth IRA (so 12k a year with those two accounts) and then I put as much as I can into my Roth TSP as I can, and when I can't budget anymore into it, I do the traditional TSP to top it off because I know at least some of what I'm putting into that would otherwise just go to taxes (I'd have to take a look at it, but I think my current situation is that for every $1 I put into traditional TSP I only lose 84 cents of pay as you're getting a present day tax deduction; when I first joined and was from a high tax state it was more along the lines of 60 cents of pay lost for every dollar I put in, so even more beneficial). Using that method, I was able to hit the max each year by the time I was a junior LT if I recall.
I realize I am the exception and not the rule, but yes, I am saving a very high % of my income. I recognize this is not doable for all or most, but I do my best to prioritize Roth.
As far as going being too high in the income brackets, I'm not there yet, I should be able to do more traditional TSP in order to reduce my income level. Keep in mind that for tax purposes, BAH and other "allowances" do not count.