misskristy, I believe that the stock market return for the long term has been pegged by many "experts" in the 10-12% range. Does that mean that you will actually come up with that kind of return over the time that you invest? That depends.
First of all, you have to "gamble" ALL your TSP money in the stock funds. Over long periods of time, that "gamble" has been shown to garner the kind of return I mentioned above. The problem, of course, is that in the SHORT RUN (for instance, right now) the market can go into a steep dive, and your TSP loses money big time. If you had put $10,000 in the TSP stock funds last July, and let it sit, you'd now have around $8,000, in other words, you'd be headed in the wrong direction.
SOME people prefer to leave their TSP funds in the G Fund, which NEVER loses. In fact, the G Fund GAINS right around 5% (sometimes more, sometimes less) every year. If you plug 5% into the TSP calculator, though, you'll see that over a long period of time, the stock funds will kick the G fund's butt. That is, assuming that our capitalistic system continues to function as it has for the last couple of hundred years.
I love the fact that you are putting 18% into a retirement account, BUT you probably would be better off putting some of that into a ROTH ACCOUNT considering your relative youth. I can't give you specific advice on that, since someone has to run all the numbers for you, BUT be sure to keep contributing enough to the TSP to get the MAXIMUM "match" from the USPS. When you think about it, that first 5% of your contribution earns over 100%, since the USPS matches it. NOWAY you can beat that kind of return!
Button, button, who's got a button??
