Rolling over my 401k from the previous company......

[mathjak107]

my company did go belly up years ago trapping my 401k .

when the company stopped paying the fees the custodian stopped handling the money . all investments were sold and converted to cash and turned over to the courts . they had to appoint a custodian to distribute the money and it took many many months where it was trapped .

the profit sharing money took a year to get . they had to track down ex employees and get signed spousal consent forms from spouses notifying them the money was being sent out .

they could not distribute a dime until they followed all the steps to trying to get those consent forms back .

i won't leave any money with any company that i don't have to .especially when i don't work there .

it was hard enough seeing the company failure coming when we worked there . it just looked like the typical vendor credit holds we always saw . not until it was to late were there signs of something deeper going on .

the day i retired i pulled my 401k money out and rolled it to my ira.

funny thing is since i work 1 day a week i am eligible to contribute to a new 401k at the same company .

[Thinking-man]

Originally Posted by rjm1cc

try Rolling over an old 401(k)............................Clearing up some questions....

Haha thank you. I need to up my search game.....

[Thinking-man]

So an update:
I finally ended up buying back into VOO among other things via the $337k roll over funds. I'm at $367k right now but could have been better.....but i dollar cost averaged it as VOO was going down. I think the lowest i bought back in was 235 or something....
i again sold half of my total last week in anticipation for a market drop....and bought back in today for about half.

i love the flexibility of the roll over IRA. it's pretty easy to get hooked and gamble....which is not good....but exciting....

[MI-Roger]

I used to be an advocate for rolling into the new employer's 401(k) plan because of the ability to remove money after age 55 without penalty if a person gets out-sourced, laid-off, victim of age discrimination, or successful early retirement.

From hanging out on this board my eyes have been opened as to the vast number of really crappy 401(k) plans out there! Limited investment choices, limited movement of funds, limitations on means of removing funds, etc. I discovered that I have been fortunate to have access to very flexible 401(k) plans at both employers.

So now I am an advocate for the Roll-Over IRA and use of the old, but still existing, 72t rule to extract money without penalties for living expenses to support an early retirement - planned or not.