You will hardly ever find a person that stays with the same company of employment for the entirety of their career. In fact, more than likely a person will change jobs and companies several times during their life. Since the majority of companies offer a 401k retirement package, these people that change companies may end up holding multiple 401k accounts under their name.

So what should you do when you switch jobs and move to another company with it’s own 401k offer? It would behoove you to consider a 401k rollover to IRA.

Transferring your 401K to an IRA fund comes with several benefits. I would like to talk now about a few of them.

To begin, if a person changes companies 3 times, they will own 4 401k policies (3 from the previous employers and 1 from the new one). Having multiple accounts can be difficult to manage. You would have to follow paper on all 4 accounts instead of just 1. And most people will get discouraged by the excess paperwork and stop taking the needed interest in their portfolio. This can create huge problems down the road.

By rolling your 401k into an IRA fund after each job change, you can consolidate that paperwork and make your retirement much easier to manage. And you can continue to add your 401k plans to a single IRA as often as necessary. That same person that changed jobs 3 times in their career would have now only 1 401k and 1 IRA. That would be worlds easier to handle.

By leaving your 401K plans in the management of your previous employers you also increase the risk of losing your retirement savings. Those companies may go under and leave you with next to nothing. But rolling over the accounts all into your personal IRA with a financial institution reduces your risk factor a great deal.

This will also allow you to take control of your planning and that is the creates reward. You don’t want to depend on others to take care of your retirement because they can’t possibly care as much about it as you do.

The 401K offers to match your investment 100%, and you don’t see an offer like that from most investment opportunities. So take advantage of it and contribute the maximum that the employer will match. Then put the extra funds into your IRA.