Roll Your 401(k) Over Into an IRA

It would never occur to me to give out some bits of advice if somebody else hadn’t first suggested an unwise alternative. Some things seem just so obvious and uncontroversial that writing them up would be pointless. Then I read something that reminds me this is the personal finance world I am talking about.

Case in point is rolling your old 401k over into an IRA when you leave your job. According to the Wall Street Journal’s Smart Money, this is not the no-brainer I foolishly assumed. It is a conundrum. Who knew?

In case you are not up to speed on the deal with 401ks once you stop working where the 401k lives, you basically have four choices. You can cash out the money in the form of a distribution, on which you will pay income taxes and, assuming you are under 59 1/2, an additional 10% penalty. That’s probably not a good idea unless you seriously needed the cash. (For example if you just lost your job.)

Second, you can also often just leave the money where it is. Many employers will allow ex-employees to maintain accounts indefinitely. Or third, if you have a new job with a new 401k plan, you can transfer the money from your old 401k to the new one.

But the best course of action for just about everybody is to roll the 401k over into an IRA. The biggest of several motivations for doing this is that you can then invest your IRA in almost anything you want to, in contrast to your 401k, which is generally limited to a menu of a dozen or so mutual funds. It’s also likely to make dealing with your investments a little simpler. If you’ve already got an IRA, having your assets in the same place makes things easier and even if you don’t, you’ll probably find that dealing with the broker or mutual fund company that holds the IRA is easier than dealing with your (former) company’s HR department.

On the other hand, coming up with reasons why moving your 401k to an IRA could be a bad thing is so hard that it quickly devolves into a game of personal finance trivia.

The best one I can come up with is that if there is an investment option in your 401k that you like and that would not be available in an IRA, you might not want to switch. That is a pretty unlikely situation. I will unscientifically guess 1% of people might run into it. Sometimes there will be special lower-fee versions of mutual funds only available to 401ks. And very rarely there are non-public funds available in 401k plans.

After that, the case against rolling over gets into obscurities. Some states treat IRAs in less advantageous ways than 401ks in bankruptcy. The rules for spousal consent for changing beneficiaries are different. And if you are planning to retire between the ages of 55 and 59 1/2 you’d rather be in a 401k for reasons I am not going to pretend to understand.

I often harp on the point that one-size-fits-all personal finance advice is unwise, but this is one of those situations where a universal rule almost works. For most folks, there’s just not much to talk about. Search the web for advice on this and you won’t find very much because few writers think it is worth mentioning. A recent post on Smart Money’s sister blog The Wallet discusses a variety of issues surrounding 401ks if you are laid off and mentions, in passing and without discussion, that rolling over into an IRA is what most planners advise.

And yet as of last week Smart Money does not see this as a non-issue. Apparently, the argument that IRAs are more flexible and convenient than 401ks is just another trick that the brokerage and mutual fund industry uses to get your business. Turns out they all have websites that try to convince you to open an IRA. Bastards.

I am a great believer in the maxim that you should never ask the barber if you need a haircut. Nevertheless, sometimes you do need a haircut even if he says so.

Why does Smart Money warn you away from IRAs? The primary argument seems to be that this is what fund companies want you to do, so it must be a bad idea. The only other one mentioned is, of all things, fees. "Investors in a 401(k) plan often pay much lower fees than retail investors—sometimes half as much." Really? Didn’t many news outlets, The Wall Street Journal included, just last month run with the story that 401k fees were so high that Congress was considering reform? I’m so confused.

I am not going to speculate on what sort of need to write something under a looming deadline caused this particular piece to be born. But with all the actually controversial topics and areas of confusion available as subject matter, there’s really no need to muddy up the waters here.

Investing, Media | Frank Curmudgeon | June 29, 2009 9:30 am

12 Comments

By mwarden, June 29, 2009 @ 9:55 am

Fees for 401ks are paid by the employer, and yes they are high. The fees for the individual mutual funds are the same no matter the container.
By fern, June 29, 2009 @ 11:32 am

I’m not so sure the employer pays 401k fees.. Can someone confirm or disconfirm that?
By mwarden, June 29, 2009 @ 11:58 am

@fern: see “Plan Administration Fees” section here http://www.dol.gov/ebsa/publications/401k_employee.html

It seems to imply that some employers will charge the fees to the employees directly, but I have not had that been the case with my employers, so I can’t speak to that.
By Dave C., June 29, 2009 @ 12:22 pm

H.R. 2989 (111th Congress) will deal with making 401(k) fees more transparent, and easier to determine, but I don’t of any provision to reduce those fees. I’m trying to follow this topic on my blog as well.
By ObliviousInvestor, June 29, 2009 @ 12:22 pm

Morningstar and Deloitte recently published a study that found that participants in employer-sponsored retirement plans paid administrative fees averaging 0.72% of assets.

That’s on top of fund expenses (which, due to poor investment options, are often unreasonably high in a 401k to begin with).

I’m in complete agreement. Get your money out of that 401k as soon as possible.
By Dan, June 29, 2009 @ 12:28 pm

I used to work with 401(k) plans, although it has been a few years so things may have changed. In many cases, the employers pay the fees. But in some cases, the employers passed some or even most of the fees on to the employees.

IIRC, most of the time fees were passed on to employees as an automatic annual/semiannual/quarterly charge of X% which functioned similarly to mutual fund expenses. Sadly, I don’t think most employees knew that they were being charged, or how much.
By Mark Wolfinger, June 29, 2009 @ 3:23 pm

Don’t be confused (I cannot believe that was not sarcasm).

The mutual fund industry has been cheating investors for so many years that it’s second nature to continue the lies.

Too bad the magazine is in cahoots with it’s major advertisers, but what else can one expect?
By ryan, June 30, 2009 @ 9:57 am

I agree about not cashing it out, and also if you would have to deal with a former company’s HR dept., I would rather just roll it into an IRA.

But my wife and I are both ex-government employees with money in TSP accounts, in they’re “Lifecyle” (target date) funds.

We’ve left them there, and have no plans to change. If I did, it would just go into Vanguard Target funds, and I think the TSP management expense is even lower than Vanguard.
By Steve, June 30, 2009 @ 3:36 pm

I’ve worked at several jobs, and at my current one they have access to the closed Fidelity Contrafund (FCNTX.) It’s actually my core holding in this 401k account.

To make things more interesting, my company was acquired and we were given a year before requiring to transfer our funds to the new plan which does _not_ have FCNTX as an option… thankfully they do have several excellent Vanguard funds to choose from
By Frank Curmudgeon, June 30, 2009 @ 10:19 pm

fern: I can confirm that “disconfirm” really is a word. I looked it up. You get a point.

OI: I’m stunned the fees are that high on average. Well, surprised anyway. Got a link to the study?

Mark Wolfinger: Other advertisers run IRAs too, so I’m not sure that Smart Money is doing anybody’s bidding.

Steve: Sounds like you’ve got (or used to have) one of the bona fide legitimate reasons to stay in a 401k with Contrafund access. I think they opened up to new investors recently, though.
By PJSacchetta, June 30, 2009 @ 11:26 pm

The focus here looks likes it’s on fees and expenses. There’s no doubt that lowers fees and expenses can be had outside of the 401-K. The one reason why someone would NOT roll over a 401-K, profit sharing plan, or any other qualified plan into an IRA is that they would lose ERISA protection.

IRAs are not considered qualified plans and therefore are not protected from creditors to the same extent as qualified plans. Do some research as to why O.J. kept receiving his NFL pension even after a $30+ million judgment. It wasn’t an IRA!
By Dasha, July 1, 2009 @ 6:31 am

Thank you for addressing this! When I read that piece in Smart Money I was so confused… I couldn’t tell if I was missing something or if THEY were on crack.