The biggest decision I had to make was whether or not to roll over my retirement account into a traditional IRA or move it to my new company’s 401k plan. There are definitely several benefits to both but leaving my 401k sit with my old employer was not one of them as the fees to maintain the account were in my opinion a bit expensive. With the recent nightmares experienced by many investors at watching their retirement accounts get cut into half I really did some homework on which would benefit me the most.
I decided to rollover my 401k into a traditional IRA with Fidelity as it allowed me far more control over my individual investments compared to those offered by the new company’s 401k plan. I really hate being limited in my choices for retirement investing and being at the whim of the company I work for when they add or drop mutual funds from their selection within the retirement account. That combined with the fees charged to new 401k made choosing an individual retirement account over the 401k for my rollover money an easy choice for me. I will definitely still utilize the new 401k and contribute the maximum allowed to get the benefit of the full company match but any retirement money I save beyond that level will go directly to my IRA.
One disadvantage I did find is that the 401k contributions limits are considerably higher than those allowed by both a traditional IRA or a Roth IRA. This might mean that for my future savings I’ll contribute the maximum amount to my IRA, enough to get the company match in my 401k and if I plan on saving more will then add it to the 401k or a Roth IRA. I really haven’t decided exactly how I’m going to handle that yet. Many might think that this is adding too much to a retirement account but the last thing I want to worry about in my golden years is if I have enough money to do the things I want. Additionally a 401k account is protected from bankruptcy, as is an IRA, I hope it never comes to that in my lifetime but if I does It will be good to know that my retirement savings are protected.
If anyone has the opportunity to utilize Fidelity for their investment accounts I can definitely say they made it extremely easy to do the 401k rollover, start and IRA and handle my private investment accounts. I would highly recommend them over some of the less expensive brokerage firms just for the easy of use factor I have experienced over this last year.
