therewasafirefight[at]gmail.com wrote:

- quote -

You contact you Benefits or HR department. They will either give you
paperwork to fill out or refer you to the custodian of you present
401(k). It's smart to move this money to your current account, as it's
easy to lose track of multiple small accounts, and this ammount would
not make sense to move to an IRA, there would be fees.
I encourage you to save now, the younger you are, the easier it will be
to meet your goals

darkness39[at]yahoo.com wrote:

- quote -

Don't forget the 10% penalty on top of the tax, if it's applicable here.

-Will

On Mar 18, 11:46 am, darknes...[at]yahoo.com wrote:
- quote -

i do have a maxed out credit card. 4k
that's it.


======================================= MODERATOR'S COMMENT:
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On Mar 17, 9:03 pm, "joeNOS...[at]bea.com" <joe.weinst...[at]gmail.comwrote:
- quote -

This advice is good. As is everything else Joe says.


- quote -

I believe OP can also withdraw the money from the 401k, paying a
withholding tax?

In which case, *if* the OP has any consumer debt, credit card debt
etc. then withdrawing that money and using it to repay that debt may
be a good strategy.

My reasoning is simple.

The amount saved is small. Even invested over the next 30 years, it's
not going to make a huge difference to retirement prospects.

However paying down consumer debt, *assuming that you don't go into
debt again*, can save you 12% per annum on that money (or more).
That's a huge, guaranteed return, by any measure.

So the question to 'therewasafire' is: what is your personal
situation? Do you have any outstanding credit card debts, car
payments or other loans that you could repay? What is their interest
rate?

On Mar 17, 1:13 pm, therewasafirefi...[at]gmail.com wrote:
- quote -


You may want to look into setting up a roll-over IRA account at one of
the brokerages (I have mine at Fidelity), then roll your account
balance into the IRA account.

On Mar 17, 1:13 pm, therewasafirefi...[at]gmail.com wrote:
- quote -

Hi Jason, and congratulations for having some retirement savings
already.
You have some choices:

1 - You could leave that old 401k money where it is, unless the
company
says you have to roll it over.

2 - If you have to, or want to move it, decide where you want it to
go,
and get *them at the destination company* to contact your old 401k
to send the money directly to them. One big mistake is to get a check
sent to you directly, which may trigger ugly taxes and penalties.
or an IRA account you could open).

It is likely that your old 401k company is taking some fees from your
money, above and beyond the fees charged by INVESCO. You can
save yourself from these fees by opening a personal traditional IRA
at a low-cost high-quality company like Vanguard, Schwab, Fidelity
etc, and tell them to get your old 401k money. At your age, you have
plenty of time to let the stock market grow your money, and the
cheapest, most efficient way to invest in the stock market is to
put all your money in the company's SP500 index fund. This is a
non-managed fund so the fees are very low, and it exactly matches
the performance of the broad SP500 stock index. 85% of managed
funds do less well over the long term so this is fairly well
performing
too.
If you have a new job with it's own 401k, contribute to it as much
as you can, at least to get any matching funds it offers. That is
free money, and it is a sin to lose any of it. As to what your new
401k should invest in, you will have a number of choices. Ask if
they offer a broad market index fund, and choose that if they do.
If not, you will have to look at each option and check the 10-year
performance.
Do ask more...
Joe Weinstein

Hello all,
This is my first post ever and maybe someone can guide me in the right
direction. I am a single, 23 year old male that put in a lot of time
at the local grocery store. Food Lion goes through Merill Lynch for
their Profit-Sharing and Retirement plan of Food Lion, LLC. I worked
there for about 6 years. as of September of 2006 I moved on to a
better job, and I occasionally recieve a statement telling me about my
account and that I have a vested balance of $2,529.86 it says in my
account detail by fund that I am 100% investment direction to INVESCO
Stale Value.

I'm not sure at this point what I should do.
How do I go by moving this information to my current job who has a
matching 401k? What exactly are my options and what's the first step?

Any advice would be great, thanks in advance.
-jason