Author Topic: Consolidating misc investments  (Read 2175 times)

annamal instinct

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Consolidating misc investments
« on: May 14, 2017, 07:19:39 PM »
I have pockets of retirement funds in different places from different jobs. They're a 403(b), an IRA, a state pension plan (I'm not vested but can roll over what I paid in), and the IRA at my current employer. (My career in nonprofits explains this miscellany of investment types.) I also have a Selected Shares money market fund from awhile back, and two State Farm IRAs that were gifted to me (I have family working for SF).

There has to be a reasonable way to consolidate these. With the exception of the current IRA for work, does it make sense to roll them over to a Vanguard IRA and index funds so they're in just 2 places? Other suggestions? Is this a good plan?

If it helps to have more background, we discovered MMM a month ago and have made great strides toward reining in our exploding volcano of wastefulness. We have a lot of "good" debt, and we plan to pay off everything with an interest rate over 5% in the next 1-2 years. After that we can save 50% or more of our income and invest it while paying off our mortgage (4.99%) and my student loans from grad school (2%). I'm hoping we can save even more aggressively after more Mustachian lifestyle changes, too.

Frankies Girl

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Re: Consolidating misc investments
« Reply #1 on: May 14, 2017, 07:41:32 PM »
Anyone that has a career longer than a year likely has several accounts at several places. I have like 8 different accounts, and I'm as consolidated as I can get.

There's nothing wrong with having a bunch of different accounts. Sometimes there is no way to condense them down - like if you have a Roth IRA, a traditional IRA, a 401k and a 403b. None of those can combine with each other, because they are different types of accounts. But if you have like 3 different Roth IRAs at 3 different companies, then you could transfer all three of those into a new consolidated Roth IRA.

That being said, any account that you can move to someplace like Vanguard is a good idea in general, as they are likely invested in very poor choices (high expense ratio type of funds and costing you additional manage fees too). Fidelity or even T Rowe are also a decent choices.

State Farm? Similar to some of the other stinkers like American Funds or worst of the bunch Edward Jones. Get the hell out of those places as soon as you can exit them.

To do so would require setting up equivalent accounts at the new place (assume it is Vanguard) so you'd call up Vanguard, open the needed accounts - Roth IRA, traditional IRA, etc., and then fill out the transfer paperwork, get it sent in, and wait for them to process the transfers.

You can do this "in kind" which means you don't sell off any of your existing funds/holdings, unless the old company has proprietary funds that can't be held outside of their company's clutches. In that case, they'll sell the funds, and transfer the money over to the new Vanguard accounts. Or you could sell off everything before the transfers, so it's pure cash that gets pulled into the new accounts. As far as selling off everything, you'd need to make sure there were no penalties or charges for doing so one way vs the other (they'll have fees sometimes if you sell them at OTHER places, but not if you sell it in the existing accounts for instance).

And be prepared to get hit with closing fees, transfer fees, and any other type of "f-you for leaving us" type fees. They'll range from $50-$200, but it's worth it to get your accounts out of the crummy stuff most every time. But do ask so it's not a surprise. ;)

Really tho, you should call up someplace like Vanguard and ask them to walk you through the process and then call up the places you have the accounts currently and ask about the fees for selling, fees for transferring and all that jazz. Definitely want to get it direct from the sources and not rely completely on anything I'm saying. :D

 

chasesfish

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Re: Consolidating misc investments
« Reply #2 on: May 15, 2017, 05:41:32 AM »
Agree with Frankies Girl , you need to consolidate all your accounts down to one provider.  You may well still have 4,5,6 separate accounts, but consolidating them down to one company helps.

I use Fidelity, they're user friendly and I own a lot of Vanguard mutual funds inside there.  I have a slight bias because Fidelity has offices in the large cities and you can get help if needed. 

Dee18

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Re: Consolidating misc investments
« Reply #3 on: May 15, 2017, 10:04:49 AM »
Don't rush to combine those!  I rolled over employer 403(b) accounts into an IRA (on the advice of Fidelity, even though the 403 account was already with Fidelity).  It turned out that this created tax consequences that then made rolling over money into Roth accounts impractical taxwise.  if i had read MMM first, I would have rolled my existing (< $100,000) IRA into a Roth before proceeding with any consolidation.

 

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