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Monday, January 12, 2009

Consolidating Retirement Funds

By Jered Starling

The average person switches jobs several times in their life. It is very rare that someone work for the same company the entire length of his/her career. Most companies offer a retirement plan in the form of a 401k, so the average person may come into ownership of several 401k accounts by the time they retire.

What should you do with your 401k fund after switching companies? You might look into a 401k rollover to IRA.

Rolling your 401k fund into an IRA can be beneficial in multiple ways. I'll briefly discuss a few of them.

First think about someone that switches jobs and employers 3 times in their life. They would have 3 401k plans to their name from the earlier employers and now a new one from their new company. Having so many accounts is very difficult to follow even for someone financially inclined. The paperwork would be 4 times as much as if you only have 1 account. This usually leads to discouragement and eventually the account holder will take less than the necesarry interest in his/her retirement. What a nightmare!

Transferring your 401k to an IRA will allow you to consolidate your retirement funds and reduce paperwork therefore making it easier on you to manage and make good decisions for the well being of your financial future. You are able to roll multiple 401k's in to one single IRA. So the person from the example above would only have to deal with their current employer's 401K and one IRA. Much better no?

Also, consolidating your accounts into an IRA reduces your risk factor. If you leave the 3 previous 401k plans with the previous companies you run the risk of the companies going under. That would in turn leave your 401k worthless. There is still a small risk when you invest in an IRA with a financial institution, but the risk is much smaller than the alternative.

This will also allow you to take control of your planning and that is the creates reward. You don't want to depend on others to take care of your retirement because they can't possibly care as much about it as you do.

The 401K offers to match your investment 100%, and you don't see an offer like that from most investment opportunities. So take advantage of it and contribute the maximum that the employer will match. Then put the extra funds into your IRA.

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