 Where is my 401K? What's up, money gigs, Mr. V here. Welcome to another video. In today's video, we're gonna be looking at what happens to your 401K if you would move on from your previous employer. Assume that you decide to either stay home or you decide to go get a new job. If you had 401K, what happens to that 401K? So, we're gonna examine three options about what happens to that 401K and then we're gonna go back and look at the advantages and disadvantages of all those options that we'll talk about. Let's get into it. So, the first option, if you were to create your job or you move on to get another job is that you can just leave your 401K with your previous employer 401K plan and just move on and just let it be there and you can get it whenever you decide to cash it. Option two is that you can either roll that 401K plan into your current employer assuming that you get a new job that has 401K. So, you can just roll that into that employer's plan and just keep it going. Option three is that you can actually roll that money into an IRA account. So, it could be a traditional IRA or it could be a Roth IRA. So, those are the options that you have. So, let's go back now and examine what situation or what advantages and disadvantages you have when you make each of the decisions. So, the first one is that you can just leave it with your previous employer. The situation for that is most people that just leave that money sitting with their previous employer is that they don't know what to do with their money. Usually, it's just a lack of knowledge. Then I've seen people that would leave it there because they understand the importance of living in there. So, let me break that down. So, if you don't know what to do with your 401K, most people just, it's there to tell them, hey, your money is here, you still have your 401K there and they're happy. They don't really look at the details. So, if I'm living my 401K with my previous employer, I want you to understand certain things. Number one is, does 401K perform at the level that you want? Is it invested in the funds that you want? Is it meeting your retirement goals? Because if you don't understand the details, you living that money there could be really, really detrimental. You could be losing a ton of money. And then you look at the fees. How much are they charging to maintain that 401K for you? So, consider all those things before you decide to leave your 401K in. So, this would be a good example. If you have your 401K plan, which your previous employer, they have really high fees and they invested in really, really crappy funds, I would say take that money out if you don't have a current employer to roll that money into and then roll it into an IRA account. So, you could do a traditional IRA, which means you roll it without paying taxes or you do a rough IRA, which means that they'll charge taxes and you can put that money in there. And then you can invest it. What are the disadvantages of that option? Number one is that you have to be savvy enough to do your research to decide what kind of funds you want to invest that money into. And I'm gonna tell you this. In today's investing space, there are so many options as far as how you can invest that money. And a lot of them are using AI that would guide you where you just have to answer a few questions and it would give you options of stocks you can invest into. So, you can go to vanguard.com and open a traditional IRA account or a Roth IRA account and move that money into WIT or M1 Finance. They have all those options for you that you can actually roll that money into. So, if you decide that you wanted to leave that money with your employer, that's what I want you to think. Think about the fees and think about the investment and then think about the returns. Option number two is that you decide you want to move that money from your previous employer for O1K plan into your current employer for O1K plan. All you have to do is go to your current employer. They'll give you a form, you fill it out, submit the form and then they'll just transfer the money into that account and then you don't have to do anything. You don't have to touch the cash. You don't see it. You don't do anything. It just comes into the account and it would be invested in the funds that your current employer for O1K account is being invested in. So, that's what you're going to get yourself into. But, what should you do? I want you again, before you make that move, consider those three things we talked about earlier. What are the fees? What are the funds that are invested in? And at the same time, what are the rate of returns for those funds? So, I want you to consider that before you roll your money over because you can rolling it over into your current employer plan is very simple as far as making your life easy because you don't have to log in into several different porters to actually check what your O1K is doing. You have it in one place but doing that could be detrimental to you. You could be rolling your money from a really good O1K plan well invested into a crappy O1K plan that's not well invested with high fees. So, this is something that you want to consider. And last but not the least is you taking that decision, like I spoke earlier, of actually moving that money from your previous employers for O1K plan and rolling that money into an IRA account. So, if you are savvy enough, setting up an IRA is not rocket science. Anybody can do it. Even if you can't, you just get on the phone. Go to vanguard.com. I'll put a link in the description below. Just call them on the phone. Tell them that you have a O1K plan you want to roll it over and they'll help you with the process. Somebody will be with you on the phone through the process or if you can just go online and do it, it's that simple. You roll that money. During the rolling process, they'll ask you if you want to do the traditional or you want to do a rough. So, you choose which one works better for you. So, if you anticipate that, you know taxes are gonna go down in the future when you retire and then you can do a traditional so you pay less taxes. But if you anticipate that taxes are gonna go up when you retire and then you could say, hey, you know what? I'm gonna do a rough right now. I'm gonna pay my taxes right now and then you roll that money over and then do your research as to what kind of funds in. If you're just somebody that's getting into the space of investing and you're not really confident about it, there are certain index funds that you can never go wrong with. So, index funds and ETFs that you can never go wrong with. The first index fund that I know for sure, and I'm gonna talk about this in a separate video where I'm gonna show you guys my portfolio for retirement, what I have in there. So, the first one is VTSA. So, it tracks the market for you. So, anything that the market does, it kind of mimics the market. So, you don't really have to do any sort of research. Just put your money in there and set your dividend return to reinvest. And why you wanna do that is because that constant reinvesting of your dividends, dividends can be reinvested, it growing that account at a faster rate than if you were not investing your dividends. So, that's something to consider. So, those are the three key things that you would wanna consider or three key options for you to do with your 401K if you were to quit your job. Again, let me recap here. The first one is that you can just leave your 401K with your previous employer. Second one is that you can take your 401K with you to your new employer. And last but not the least, you can roll that 401K into an IRA account and decide if you wanna do a traditional, you wanna do a rough IRA account. And that's how you can actually manage your money. So, those are the options. So, question of the day. What do you think is the best option to do with your 401K? Let me know in the comment section. If you like the video, go ahead and give that thumbs up. If you find it useful, share it with one friend. If you can relate to what we're talking about here, let me know in the comment section. Like, share, subscribe. And as always, stay motivated.