Your Financial Future Is In Your Hands

All of us have one big transition facing us not that far down the road. Of course life is all about transitions. We make a transition from childhood to adolescence. We transition from being a child of a house to adulthood and independence. And we make big transitions through marriage, parenthood and even becoming a grandparent. But of all of these, maybe the one we need to focus on in terms of preparation is the big transition to retirement.

Moving from the world of work and the active life that all that entails to retirement and your golden years is a huge adjustment for people. There are lifestyle changes, changes to your goals and priorities and even in how people view you. But the changes to your finances are perhaps the ones you will notice the most. When you move from getting a steady paycheck to living on your Social Security and retirement, that is a major shift in your expectations and how you plan your life.

The saddest thing we see when it comes to people in late middle age are those who are depending on Social Security to be the sole means of their support in retirement. While Social Security is a fine program, it has created a false illusion of “security” that somehow the government will take care of you in your old age. The “brass tacks” truth is that if you are depending on any outside agency to be your means of support in your retirement years, your assurance that you will be conformable in your retirement years is not assured.

Even if you are currently working at a job that has a retirement program or a 401K that you put some into, you may still be allowing yourself to “depend” on your job to be there for you when you get to retirement age. And the horror stories of the elderly who finally arrive at retirement age to discover that what they thought they could depend on was not reliable are tragic.

This is why starting now to prepare for you financial future will be the best way you can be absolutely sure you will have what you need as you enter that time when you should be able to relax and enjoy the fruit of your labors. This is a major attitude shift and if you can accomplish it and take charge of your financial future, you will approach retirement with much greater confidence.

The outcome of your decision to take charge of your retirement will be that you won’t just let money get put away for you without any oversight on your part. You cannot always trust that the managers of your retirement account at work are handling the money correctly. By staying on top of how those funds are being invested and doing all you can to direct where those funds go, you are making sure that you get maximum return on your investment all along the way. And when its time for you to need those funds, you will be ready to use them because you are acutely aware of their value.

We cannot control Social Security and there is a chance it will be there for you when its time for you to retire. But instead of depending on Social Security, build a financial future that is secure whether it is there or not. Then when you retire and your retirement packages begin to kick and give you that lifestyle of leisure and financial safety that you want, if you do see Social Security add a few dollars to your monthly funds, so much the better.

By taking control over your financial future, you are putting the security of your funds and the planning that you will have what you need when those wonderful years come along. You are depending on the one person you know is in turn with what you will need and has always been abler to plan and provide for yourself and your family and that is you. It’s a good feeling to put the management of your financial future in your own hands in preparation for retirement. But it’s a wonderful feeling you worked hard to enjoy so you deserve it.

Turning that Mortgage Around

Your house that you bought so many years ago represents one of the biggest investments of your life. By the time you approach retirement, if you have stuck with it, you may well have that house paid off. And with appreciation, that home may be worth twice or three times what you paid for it and you have all the equity from those years of house payments. Therefore, in addition to the joy you have had living in that house and raising your family there, that house is also can be a big part of your retirement planning as well.

It used to be that to take advantage of that equity when you enter retirement, you either had to sell the house and go live in a nursing home or retirement community or you took out a new mortgage borrowing against the equity and you find yourself paying huge interest payments all over again.

But a new kind of mortgage called the “reverse mortgage” is now available so a senior citizen who is preparing for retirement can begin to realize some of that equity as capital and not have to take on a loan payment or move out of their home. This innovative new program allows you to set up the equivalent of a home equity loan but instead of getting a huge lump sum, you can have the equity sent to you in the form of monthly payments so the equity of your home can actually become part of your monthly budget to supplement Social Security or other retirement funds.

What is great about the reverse mortgage type of financial vehicle is that you are never required to pay back the loan of the money that is based on your equity. The only time that loan amount would be required of you would be if you moved, sold the house or passed away in which case the sale of the house would realize the equity to retire the loan. In other words, if you take out $100,000 from your home for medical costs or just to finance a comfortable retirement living, you are not called upon to pay back that money and you can continue to live in the house for as long as you want to.

This is a phenomenal arrangement that seems tailor made for senior who want to enjoy their retirement years without financial worries and do so living in the house where they raised their children and a home that has become so precious to them. For children of a retiring parent, the reverse mortgage is a godsend because mom or dad can stay in their own home where they are happiest. And if they can keep the old homestead, the whole family will continue to enjoy coming to visit there, seeing the grandkids run and play in the same yard they grew up in and having holidays there as well.

Like some of the best programs for retiring persons, the reverse mortgage was originally put together by the US. Department of Housing and Urban renewal. It isn’t often that the government gets something right but they hit one out of the ball park with the reverse mortgage. It is a program and provides federally insured funds to seniors so they can supplement their income in a safe way that allows them to use the equity of their home for their retirement comfort without ever having to give up that home. And because the money coming out of a reverse mortgage is technically a loan, you never have to pay taxes on that money which is another big financial blessing.
The reverse mortgage is an option worth considering as part of retirement planning. It gives seniors one more option for keeping their homes. And that is good for everybody.

The Who, What, When, Where and Why of Retirement

In the newspaper business, when a reporter wants to find out all about a case, they always ask the big five questions which are who, what, when, where and why. If the reporter can get these basic questions answered about any story, that is considered good research.

We can use the same approach as we begin to process the idea of retirement planning. It would be a mistake to only look at retirement planning as strictly a financial step. If all retirement consisted of was a change to where you get your money, that would be one level of change. But retirement also brings with it big lifestyle changes and changes to your priorities and how you use your time. So it’s a good idea to prepare for all of the changes retirement brings by asking the big five questions.

Who will you be retiring with is a very important question because your mode of living is going to change in every way imaginable. That man or woman who has been part of your life for so many decades will now become central to every move you make when retirement puts you together every day all day. So you should think that through and decide how you want to arrange your time so both of you still have your own interests, activities and friends but you can also enjoy a new closeness that retirement affords you.

What you will be doing with your time is a huge question as you walk away from the working world. Retirement is a great time to start enjoying those hobbies that never got enough time. You can catch up on your reading, write the great American novel or take classes to learn to paint or do woodworking. See retirement as a time when the sky is the limit for you to explore your creative side.

When you retire is a big factor on how much of your retirement savings you have to have ready by a certain time. For many, dipping into the retirement savings can be postponed for years. If you get to the point that you can collect Social Security and still make a fair amount of money part time or performing some cottage industry job, you might be able to keep your retirement savings growing even for the first five to ten years of retirement. And that means a longer more prosperous retirement time frame for you and your spouse as well.

Where will you live once you settle into the place you want to call your retirement bungalow. If you plan to sell the house and buy a condo or move into an assisted living center, there is a lot of preparation for both of those steps. There isn’t time like the present to begin that retirement planning by getting the house ready to sell and by getting out and researching the best retirement living options for you to consider.

Why retire is more than just a philosophical question. You may be retiring because you got to a certain age and it is required of you. But to enter retirement with a good attitude, it’s good to find your own motivations for wanting to scale back your responsibilities and enjoy some leisure time as a senior citizen. And if retirement means more time for hobbies, chances to travel or enjoy time with your spouse or greater access to those sweet grandbabies, those are great reasons to enter the life of a retired person.

But the one question we did not list that may be more than all the rest is the “how” of retirement. How you go about moving from a life of working, selling the house and getting settled in a completely new world, perhaps with new friends and new objectives for living is a major challenge for anyone especially if you have been a productive member of the business or working world for many decades.

There are a lot of levels to the “how question”. That is why in a lot of ways the period of time leading up to retirement and doing retirement planning can be as active as retirement itself. But it’s good you are getting started now because by being prepared, your transition to retirement will be smooth and as painless as possible for such a big change of life.

The Many Levels of Retirement Planning

The concept of retirement planning brings up the image of you working with your investment counselor or setting up your 401K so you have adequate financial resources when you retire. And it is true that a big part of being ready to retire involves being ready financially to be able to step out of the work world and start to take life easier.

But just as life is not just about making money, retirement is about so much more than having the money not to work. Preparation for retirement also means preparing to live a simpler life, preparing to become a “senior citizen” and a grandparent and preparing to look at life differently.

Your health care is going to be an important issue in your retirement years. As you enter retirement, you may be strong as an ox and active and full of health and life. But any of us can fall prey to poor health or accidents. And if your employer from whom you retired does not extend your health care insurance for you to continue your coverage past your employment, you should make other plans. You can continue the same coverage that you had under the Cobra system but that can get pretty costly and dip into your finite retirement savings pretty significantly. Medicare can be helpful too. But to be perfectly comfortable that you have coverage, look to Medicare supplement insurance so you maintain the same quality of care in retirement that you have now in the working world.

Don’t just limit your retirement planning to your money. Your retirement will be a time of a big change of lifestyle and a change to your values and how you spend your time as well. You will have more time on your hands and studies show that those who enter retirement without “an agenda” can become adrift in all that time and that isn’t healthy. Human beings are doers so even though you may no longer be working for a living, find ways to be productive and make a difference in your community. You can start finding those opportunities long before retirement so when you finally step out of the work world, expanding those hobbies and volunteer efforts is as natural as can be.

In addition to the change of where you spend your time each day, you may have even a bigger change in where you live ahead for you in retirement. Many times people who step into their retirement years find that maintaining the house where you raised the kids is just not necessary and more work than it worth. Selling the home and using the equity to finance a leisurely retirement life is a great way to go. But you should start early both preparing the home for sale and preparing the family that “grandma and grandpa’s house” is going away.

In addition, where you go to live is something that can be great fun to dream about and doing some research on just the right place. You may choose to rent a small place in an older part of town and enjoy a whole new lifestyle in that setting. Or you might go for a high-rise condo with a view of the river or a nice quiet apartment in a retirement oriented apartment complex where you and other retirees can explore this new world together.

Above all it’s important to embrace the retired lifestyle with the enthusiasm and excitement that you might greet any new opportunity. Don’t let being retired mean just not working. In fact, go through the mental and emotional exercises of putting the working world behind you and redefining yourself in this new role. You are retired now and you are a senior citizen and maybe even a grandparent.

These are not negative things. There is a strong role for grandma and grandpa in society and in your family. And the world takes great joy in a senior citizen who embraces that time of their life and sets out to be the best senior citizen they can be. If you predetermine that this is the kind of retired person you are going to be, that attitude will propel you past that sudden change of life shock and get your retired life off in running in an exciting way that will lead to many happy and fun times in your life of leisure as a retired person.

The Hidden Dangers of Retirement

We can all remember a time when we took the children to some event or theme park that was supposed to be “totally awesome”. Then when the kids get there and see that Mickey Mouse is a guy in a suit and that the rides are about the same as the local Six Flags, an inevitable let down and disappointment sets in. And that is no fun for the parents on the trip home when all of those expectations did not come to pass when the kids came face to face with reality which did not line up with their dreams and hopes.

But sometimes even adults can be guilty of letting dreams and images of a golden time ahead get the best of us. We often develop a mythology of how retirement will be when we get there and when that retired life actually starts, there are some real, down to earth adjustments that need to be made. So if you can know some of the hidden dangers of retirement in advance, it is so much better to go into retirement with your eyes open and have realistic expectations.

There are two negative reactions to the sudden shift of lifestyle in retirement. They are loneliness and boredom. Even if you are going to be home all the time, there is no question that once you stop going to an office or having regular responsibilities, you can often feel a sense of loss and grief because you miss the people, the regular human contact and the fun of being out and that can result in loneliness that can get pretty chronic.

For men especially the feeling of boredom can also set in pretty fast when the challenge of the work world goes away. In a lot of cases, men live for their jobs and when that world goes away, there is a sense of disorientation and not knowing what to do with themselves that is disconcerting for the family and for the retired man himself. You may have been looking forward to a less stressful life only to find that it was the stress that makes you tick and without it, you feel adrift in life with no direction or goals.

Both of these problems can be addressed by not letting your retirement life be to idle, at least not at first. You can fill your life up with volunteering, getting busy with family or by getting involved socially with other retired people. One area of volunteering that can go a long way to replace the gratification of the work place is to work with habitat for humanity to help build homes for people who cannot afford a home any other way. Both retired married partners can find ways to pitch in and it gets you out with people doing things that are worthwhile.

Give yourself time to get used to the idea of retirement and to the new lifestyle. It should be a simpler lifestyle because your responsibilities are reduced and you have more time on your hands. Be aware that if you and your spouse are suddenly around each other every day and every hour of the day, that is going to create new stresses which can also qualify as a hidden danger of retirement. By being aware that this is not the fault of either spouse but a natural reaction. The best response is just to get out and do things separately and create that natural space you are both used to more often.

There will be a natural down time when you first retire and treat the first month like vacation. But don’t stay on vacation. Let your ambition and zeal for life find new outlets. It will be fun and exciting to see where it takes you and that is what retirement is all about.

Taking Your Retirement Around the World

One of the most common dreams many people have for their retirement years is to travel. So often when you are in the middle of building a career and raising a family, your travel consists of trips to Orlando for Disney World or doing something focused on the kids. So when you get to that phase of life where your children are grown up and it’s just you and your spouse, now you can focus on trips that are for just you two going places you to go and doing things you want to do.

So if you feel that you will be taking your travel life to a new level when you reach retirement age, there is plenty you can do to get ready. Obviously, you will need to focus your savings and financial preparations so you have an ample budget for travel when the time arrives. The last thing you want is to come up on the time when your dream of traveling together can be a reality only to find that you did not set aside the budget for it.

One way you can do that is to take advantage of the years between when the kids all move out and are done with college and the beginning of you retirement years. This can be as much as a ten to fifteen year time span when both of you can work to payoff bills and build that retirement nest egg. If your basic retirement fund for you to live on is healthy and you are meeting your financial retirement goals, to take one of the spouse’s salary and put it all aside for future travel can result is a very healthy budget to get out and see the world in your golden years together.

It might feel like it’s a little self indulgent for you to set aside so much money for you and your spouse to have travel adventures late in life. Well, you have been a good citizen, a good dad or mom, a good worker and in every respect done the right things all these years. So nobody would deny you the joy of really enjoying the thing you love the most when you do reach your retirement years together.

You can afford a few “training trips” in the years coming up on retirement from time to time to begin to retool your travel skills. If you have been in your career a long time, you may have sufficient vacation that you can take an extra week a year just for adult travel and still have plenty to go see the kids and do all the family stuff that you must do and you enjoy so much.

It will be during these training trips that you will hone your ability to stay on the road longer each time out. Traveling for long periods of time is a developed skill. You will need to learn how to pack, how to manage your international paperwork if international travel is in your plans and how to handle jet lag as well. These are “travelers skills” that you can be developing leading up to that big moment when both partners are able to retire full time and really start getting out there and seeing the world.

Another adjustment and financial resource that can put some additional funding into your travel funds is your house. Many people sell their homes late in life when you don’t need so much space to raise kids and you no longer have the desire or take great joy in taking care of a yard and managing the upkeep on a home. If you know you are going to make this big change of lifestyle away from the home bound mom and dad and toward the world travelers you want to be, you can be preparing the house for sale in the last few years before you retire.

Because you know well in advance that you have a new life of adventure and fun ahead in your retirement years, you can use the last few years before both of you stop working to get ready. Then once your retirement is official and you walk out of the retirement party at work, you can walk right onto the jet way and take off on a brand new life of fun and adventure seeing the world together during your retirement years.

Scaling Back the Farm

When you are in the middle of your years of raising a family, there is nothing like owning your own home to make that experience rewarding. So if you bought a home with the conventional yard, fence, neighbors, dog and all of the trappings of suburbia, you no doubt have many happy memories that you had “back at the farm” as you may have called it. Many people even go so far as to name their home something like “Happy Acres” to give their homestead even more personality and add that sense of ownership to it.

Probably to your kids, the house you raised them in will forever to your home and the idea of anyone else living in it is heresy of the worst kind. But as you begin to move toward retirement age, you may see the value in selling that home and getting into something smaller, cozier and with less overhead.

Retirement doesn’t always mean moving into a nursing home or retirement center. You may have many happy years ahead of you where you are plenty able to get around and have no need of “assisted living”. But selling the house as you enter into your retirement years makes a lot of sense for a lot of good reasons.

For one thing, you may have that house paid off and there may be a lot of equity in that home that you can use to get into a cozy little condo or apartment and have plenty of money left over to pad your retirement savings or afford a bit of travel with your spouse. If your home can finance some of the trips you have been dreaming of all these years, that is a good payback for being so careful with your money during your working years.

You can take a one time tax exemption that we all are allowed to use which permits you to sell the house and not have to pay taxes on the proceeds even if you don’t sink the money into another house. That means that all of that equity money is sitting there waiting for you to put it to work. While you cannot sell your memories, if the house isn’t serving your needs as a family any more, why bother with it?

Many times when you get done raising the kids and no longer are tied down to a job, it might be time for you and your spouse to get out there and enjoy life and travel. Retirement is often a time to get rid of a lot of your material possessions and get lose to get out and enjoy your freedom and see some of the world that you couldn’t do when you were raising children. But if you live in a small place that is not difficult to lock up and walk away from, you have the freedom that you always dreamed of when you thought of the word “retirement”.

Another great reason to get out of your house as you move toward retirement is that a house with a yard and all of the other trappings of ownership is a constant ownership problem. You are responsible to fix the fence, get the plumbing fixed, grow a yard, a garden and keep up the house year in and year out. If you sell the place and rent or move into a smaller place such as a condo, a huge amount of that maintenance if not all of it disappears. Now when the appliances break down, just call “the super” and let them deal with it. You deserve to have those worries taken off of your back. That is what retirement is all about.

So getting rid of the homestead might be a great idea for your retirement planning. But be prepared for the move and the work that getting the old place ready will entail. You didn’t clutter that place up in a week and you won’t get out of it that fast either. But by going through your stuff and streamlining your life now, that is something your kids won’t have to do later. And when you are moved out and another young family is getting started in your old homestead, you can congratulate yourself on a great move to put yourself in a perfect place to enjoy a happy and fun retirement with the love of your life.

Retirement Looks Different Through a Woman’s Eyes

The classic picture of a couple retiring and the wife cashing in on the great retirement planning of the husband is a pretty picture for sure but it doesn’t always line up very well with reality. For thousands of women, seeing the retirement years ahead mean you will be making plans for retiring yourself. But even if you have a husband, it’s a good idea to look at retirement with the idea of what if you have to face it alone. It’s a sad statistic but women outlive men in general. So if you get to retirement or just before it and you find yourself facing that next transition of life, retirement looks a lot different through a woman’s eyes than when a man does the same preparation.

Saving up for retirement is something that is at least as important if not more important for women as it is for men preparing for the same time of their lives. And since women typically earn somewhat less than men during their careers, sitting down and thinking through the formula of how much to set aside for retirement should be a carefully considered act and one that is repeated frequently over the years to make sure you are on track.

This is especially true if your work is not in the conventional world of big business. If you make a good living running your own antique shop or as an entrepreneur as many women do, you have to think about your retirement planning yourself because you will not have the advantages of a company sponsored 401k plan to cash in on. So as soon as you feel you know that the way you make your living is not gong to change, start your saving and investing immediately.

On the other side of that equation, it might be worth taking a look at getting into a corporate situation entirely for the insurance and the retirement benefits. While there is often a “glass ceiling” in the business world, if you know why you are there which is to build a strong retirement planning package, you can leverage your position in the business world shrewdly and not have the stresses that many men endure in that same setting.

Above all, make it your private passion to learn all you can about investments and ways you can build your retirement portfolio. With the advent of internet trading, often a woman can start with very little and with some careful investing and conservative stock purchases, build up an impressive portfolio that can serve as an excellent retirement vehicle down the road.

Just as you may have done if you spent your working years in a family situation, you should look at how your money is used not only for the immediate value but as an investment down the road. It is often convenient to live in an apartment or rental property because when you are a working woman, upkeep on a home is a nuisance. And if you don’t like mowing the lawn and all of the other overhead of a home, that purchase may not fit your lifestyle.

Nonetheless, home ownership is one of the smartest ways to go about building equity in advance of retirement. You might look at buying a house as a big step toward financial independence in your retirement years. The way the tax laws are structured, you will get a lot of financial value out of home ownership and it can serve as the basis for further financial planning once your ownership of the home is secured. So take a second look at home ownership in a house with a yard and all of the trappings. If the overhead is too much to take on, you can often bring in renters or roommates who may enjoy that aspect of living in a house and you can cut them some slack on the rent if they take care of upkeep of the place.

By beginning to plan early in life for retirement later, women can do just as well as men in preparing for this important part of life. But you have to face the responsibilities of retirement planning squarely and not procrastinate on starting your investment and retirement portfolios far enough ahead that they will pay off later. If you do, you too can enjoy a peaceful and prosperous retirement years.

On How to NOT Screw Up Your Retirement Planning

Planning for retirement is something grown ups do. So as soon as you can when you settle into your adult life, if you can get your retirement planning moving, you will benefit from the wisdom of moving on this early in life when its time for you to retire. Too often young people live in a fantasy world that they will never grow old. But short of the worst case scenario of an early demise, everyone is going to get old and its far better to do so with a plan then to “let it sneak up on you.”

This is something you don’t want to screw up. Is it possible to screw up retirement planning? Of course it is. If you speak to senior citizens who did not start planning in advance and got to their senior years with nothing to fall back on and no funds to use so they can step out of the working world and enjoy a more leisurely retirement lifestyle, that is an example of people who screwed up their retirement planning. So it’s good to know the common mistakes people make so you can avoid them.

Probably the biggest mistake that you can make in your retirement planning is to wait to start it until you are pretty close to retirement. If you want to retire at 60 and you don’t start getting ready until you are 55, you will not have nearly as well prepared a retirement package as if you had started when you was 25 or 35. By starting early, you can set back a small amount each month and put it into an IRA, your employer’s 401k or some other retirement vehicle. Then just let that money continue to accumulate and grow and before you know it you are sitting on top of a pretty substantial nest egg.

Speaking of sitting on top of a nest egg, the second big mistake people make is not leaving that nest egg alone. When that retirement investment fund starts to get big, it is really easy to look at it as a way to get you out of credit card debt trouble or to borrow against for some new plan or possession you want. Above all, resist this temptation. If you lose that retirement fund due to foolish use of the funds in your middle age years, you are back to square one with nothing to show for your years of hard work developing that retirement nest egg.

The plan of setting up withholding from your checkbook or a direct deposit to your retirement account of retirement savings allows you to go about your busy life knowing that your retirement planning is underway. This is step one but its not a good idea to never go back and review your retirement plan and see if how you are going about getting ready for retirement well in advance. Make it a regular ritual to sit down and review what is going on with your investment funds. Look at the way your investments have been performing and if you are not getting a good return on those money, make some changes. Remember, just because your retirement funds are being managed by the company you work for doesn’t mean the money belongs to them. It’s yours so be responsible and manage it.

Starting early and staying proactive about your retirement is your best approach to retirement planning and one that will result in a much bigger retirement fund for you to start your golden years with. And by taking good care of your retirement before you need it, you are guaranteeing that it will take good care of you when its time to depend on that fund for a happy and prosperous retirement lifestyle.

Make your Retirement Money Walk With You

Planning for retirement is a project that you do for virtually your entire adult life. The earlier you start putting money back for retirement, the better your golden years will be. And if you have been faithful in participating in your employers 401K plan, you can start to some serious money begin to build up as you realize the vesting of the employer matching funds and you continue to make your contributions month after month. It can get pretty exciting when you get those statements and you see your retirement fund really start to take shape.

But your career in business can take a lot of twists and turns along the way. And sometimes you change jobs for a lot of reasons. But the question comes up then, “What happens to my 401K money if I leave before retirement?” The good news is that you don’t lose it. The 401K program is federally monitored and once those funds go in there, they are yours if you are vested in them.

But if you move jobs several times during your career which is very common in the modern business marketplace, if you don’t take some action, you can end up with retirement money scattered over all of your last jobs which is messy and makes for a nightmare to keep track of. It would be better if you can make your retirement money walk with you so you know where it is and you can keep all of your retirement planning funds in one place so you can take advantage of them all at once when you are ready to retire.

When you first leave your employer to go to another company you are given a couple choices of what to do with your retirement funds. One option is to leave them behind to catch up with them decades later when you are ready to retire. In addition to wanting to keep this important asset with you as you travel from job to job, you have no idea if that employer will even be in business when you are ready to retire. You don’t need that kind of uncertainty when it comes to your retirement money.

Another option that is offered to you is to cash out your 401k and withdraw the results. While this may be attractive if you are between jobs, it’s really a bad idea. For one thing, the laws governing the 401k call for you to pay a large penalty if you withdraw them before retirement age. Not only that, once you take that money out of your retirement funds, it’s gone and your retirement planning will suffer a serious set back.

A very good option that is available to you is to roll your current 401K over to your new employer. Now if you left the last job without a new employer either through termination or leaving to start your own business, that may not be an option. If you are looking for a new job and think you will have one in the next year or so, you can leave your 401k money where it is and transfer it later though. In that way, your 401k continues to accumulate as one fund, not many.

But a third option is to roll the 401k money into a tax sheltered privately owned retirement fund. You own this account and you usually have an investment management company helping you with the investment and protection of that money until it is time for you to retire. This is an outstanding option because that investment company works for you so you call the shots about your retirement money. And if you use this option, you can still start with a new 401k fund at your next employer knowing you have a place to put the funds in the event of another change of jobs. And that puts you in the driver’s seat which is a very good feeling when it comes to retirement planning.

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