Where do I Start!?! Organizing Retirement Accounts and Embarking on FI

[wildfire]

Hello!

This is my inaugural post on MMM or any forum for that matter. I have a slew of questions but I'm stuck at the one I'm facing today...

My wife and I are being introduced to the topic of FI and are all on board, since gaining the reigns on our finances I've come to discover my several accounts and I'm trying to figure out what the heck is going on and what actions I need to take. Background, I am married with a child, we gross roughly 90-100k together, myself as a 27 y/o firefighter and part-time ski patroller and my spouse as a social worker.

A list of our retirement accounts includes... 

    401k - Old - $15,000
    457b - Old - $1700
    401k - Part time gig - $1800

    457b - Current - $200
    FPPA Pension - Current

Spouse has...
    403b Old
    403b Current
    Roth IRA
And together we have...
    Vanguard Brokerage account - $10,000 in VTSAX

My main question is, should I roll over my old 401 and 457 into the accounts that I'm now contributing to? I'd like to keep everything as simple as possible, so fewer accounts is appealing but I'm not sure that is the right thing to do or not. Otherwise, our developing FI plan is to...

- Spend as little as possible
- Max out 457b and 403b
- Max out 401 (Should I open another one up to try and max out?)
- Put what's left post-tax into our vanguard

I have heard of the idea of the buckets, but haven't really seen anything explicitly what the buckets are and what to invest in first. I'm sure there are a lot of ways to do it. Anyway...help, insight, reference to articles, blogs, whatever is very appreciated.  Thank you, new internet friends!

[Virtus3]

Welcome! You'd probably benefit most from posting a full case study.

[Freedomin5]

Welcome to the forums! You’ll find that the forum and its members contain a wealth of information.

Here’s the post on Investment Order: Investment Order

If you haven’t read this investment series by jlcollins yet, it’s also a good one: https://jlcollinsnh.com/stock-series/

There was also another post several years back on breaking your retirement into stages and having pots of money set aside for each stage as a way to calculate the total amount you need and figure out how much to put in each account. Here: https://ournextlife.com/2016/02/17/how-we-calculated-our-numbers-for-each-phase-of-early-retirement/

I’ll let the Americans on the forum give more guidance on your retirement accounts situation.

[MDM]

My main question is, should I roll over my old 401 and 457 into the accounts that I'm now contributing to?

Probably, although it isn't completely clear which accounts you are contributing to.  Can you clarify?

[G-dog]

My main question is, should I roll over my old 401 and 457 into the accounts that I'm now contributing to?

Probably, although it isn't completely clear which accounts you are contributing to.  Can you clarify?

I would look at who is managing each account (e.g., Vanguard, Fidelity, etc.), look at the fund options in each, and look at the expense ratios (fees) for each fund option. If your old account(s) have lower fees than your current account(s), I would leave the old accounts stay, unless your fund options are really horrible.

[MrThatsDifferent]

I would read all of MMM’s articles from the beginning and then make a plan.

[DaTrill]

I'd roll into one Rollover IRA as some of the accounts may have minimum balances and eventually fee the account to death or do a redemption to get rid of the small accounts (very costly for plans to administer and once happened to me with 10% penalty).  Call the broker where you have an account and ask them to assist with a Rollover IRA and let them do all the legwork.  ETFs>mutual funds in taxable accounts. 

I shoot for 33/33/33 for broker/traditional/ROTH and never get there, but this is the goal to diversify tax treatment with the uncertainty of future tax/retirement laws.  I'm about 50/30/20 despite always maxing ROTH when given the choice, due to employer preference for Traditional 401k.       

[wildfire]

Thanks all, the references are incredibly helpful. I think you're right, a case study would be helpful. I'm going to look into that now. As for which accounts I'm currently contributing to, it's any account listed that says "current" after it, I should have made that more clear.

[G-dog]

Vanguard has lots of short fact sheets and discussions on their site. They are my company of choice, and their client service group helped rollover my company 401k after left that job.