new to this game

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

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.

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

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?

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

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

-Will

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