401k rollover

It has been a year since leaving my permanent hospital job in the Ozarks, and every three months I receive a statement regarding my 401k account. Now I am just the kind of person to leave things as they are, not because of patience on my part, but more like a severe case of procrastination.

I have no idea how many travel companies I will be working with in the future; I love the one I'm working with now, but most likely I will have a handful over the next several years. The idea of leaving a trail of 401k plans tagging along and multiple quarterly mailings to keep track of sounded less appealing than even my procrastination could stand.

So I finally made the phone call to the company holding my plan and learned how to make the rollover into an IRA. The rep on the other end of the phone walked me through filling out the form correctly. He also gave me the name and phone number of the plan administrator, an employee at the hospital. I then called her for the fax number and sent the papers her way, where she signed them off and forwarded them to the holding company.

I elected to have a check sent directly to the IRA broker so as to prevent a heavy tax penalty and the deposit was made. All told, it was only about fifteen minutes to accomplish and was completed in about two weeks.

I have a separate IRA which is a Roth that I make monthly contributions to; but the traditional IRA I keep just for rollover funds. Now I have a way to keep all those past and future plans in one easy account and only one quarterly statement to keep track of.