Blended Retirement Calculator

The military's Blended Retirement System (BRS) and the legacy High-3 pension pay out very differently, and this tool lays the two side by side so the trade-offs are visible. The choice itself is closed: everyone who entered service on or after January 1, 2018 is in BRS automatically, and members already serving could opt in only during 2018, a decision that could not be reversed. The comparison still shows what the lower BRS multiplier costs and how much of the gap the TSP has to cover.

The calculator takes three inputs: years of service, your High-3 monthly basic pay (the average of your highest 36 months) and the TSP balance you expect to have at retirement. The legacy pension is 2.5% of the High-3 for each year served; the BRS pension is 2.0% per year. To put the TSP on the same monthly footing, the calculator divides the balance you enter by 240, spreading it over 20 years with no investment growth, and adds that to the BRS pension. It does not project the TSP itself: the balance you enter should already include your own contributions, the 1% automatic contribution and up to 4% of matching (5% of basic pay from the government in all), and Continuation Pay is left out.

The piece people most often underrate is how compounding works inside the TSP under BRS. Contributing steadily, and contributing enough to capture the full government match, can swing the long-run BRS outcome substantially. That growth happens before the balance you type in, so the result is only as good as your TSP estimate; spreading it over 20 years with no return is a simple way to set it beside a pension.