vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
MB's math is right, but I can describe it in a short sentence. All Traditional accounts are combined, 401(k) rollover is no different from other IRA money. You should have been tracking your non-deducted money via form 8606 so you know this figure. The non-deducted money as a percent of your total balance is the percent of conversion that's not taxed.  (To be clear, deducted contributions and growth are not tracked separately, one only tracks the non-deducted deposits.)
I'm concerned about your extreme focus on Roth. In today's dollars it would take nearly $2 million to produce enough of an annual withdrawal to fill the 15% bracket. If you are able to fund both 401(k)s and 2 IRAs (total $43K) you're clearly in the 25% bracket or higher. If you retire 100% with Roth savings, and little to no pretax money, you miss the opportunity to receive withdrawals at zero(1), 10, and 15% brackets. Missing this isn't much better than having too much pretax and being in a higher bracket at retirement.  One factor often overlooked is that few people manage a working life with no gaps. During times when income is lower for whatever reason, it's a great time to convert a bit to Roth.  (1)by zero bracket, I mean the combined standard deduction and exemptions. For two people this is currently (for 2017) $20,800 total. And it goes up a bit most years.
When you adjust your investments the following will happen: Initial condition: Modified condition: This means that after this change you will note that the amount of federal tax you pay each month via withholding will go up. You are now contributing less pre-tax, so your taxable income has increased. If you make no other changes, then in April you will either have increased your refund by 6 months x the additional $25 a month, or decreased the amount you owe by the same amount. There is no change in the total 401K balance at the end of the year, other than accounting for how much is held pre-tax vs. Roth post-tax. Keep in mind that employer contributions must be pre-tax. The company could never guess what your tax situation is. They withhold money for taxes based on the form you fill out, but they have no idea of your family's tax situation. If you fail to have enough withheld, you pay the penalty — not the company. *The tax savings are complex because it depends on marital status, your other pre-tax amounts for medical, and how much income your spouse makes, plus your other income and deductions.
401k vs IRA: -This is a personal decision. You could move all your prior 401ks into an IRA you set up for yourself. Generally the limitations of a 401k are the lack of funds to invest in that fit your retirement strategy, or high expense ratios. Be sure to investigate the fees you would pay for trades in an IRA (401k are almost always free) and the expense ratio for funds in your 401k vs funds you might invest in at a broker for your IRA. Best of both: -You can roll all your 401ks into a single 401k and still set up an IRA or Roth IRA (if your income qualifies) that you can contribute to separately. This could give you flexibility in fund choices if your 401k fees tend to be cheaper while keeping the bulk of your nest egg in low cost mutual funds through an employer account. Last advice: Even if you don't like the options in your current 401k, make sure you are contributing at least enough to get any employer match.
"Your employment status is not 100% clear from the question. Normally, consultants are sole-proprietors or LLC's and are paid with 1099's. They take care of their own taxes, often with schedule C, and they sometimes can but generally do not use ""employer"" company 401(k). If this is your situation, you can contact any provider you want and set up your own solo 401(k), which will have great investment options and no fees. I do this, through Fidelity. If you are paid with a W2, you are not a consultant. You are an employee and must use your employer's 401(k). Figure out what you are. If you are a consultant, open a solo 401(k) at the provider of your choice. Make sure beforehand that they allow incoming rollovers. Roll all of your previous 401(k)s and IRA's into it. When you have moved your 401(k) to a better provider, you won't be paying any extra fees, but you will not recoup any fees your original provider charged. I'm not sure why you mention a Roth IRA. If you try to roll your 401(k) into a Roth instead of a traditional IRA or 401(k), be aware that you will be taxed on everything you roll. ---- Edit: a little info about IRA's in response to your comment ---- Tax advantaged retirement accounts come in two flavors: one is managed by your company and the money is taken out of your paycheck. This is usually a 401(k) or 403(b). You can contribute up to $18K per year and your company can also contribute to it. The other flavor is an IRA. You can contribute $5,500 per year to this for you and $5,500 for your spouse. These are outside of your company and you make the deposits yourself. You choose your own provider, so competition has driven prices way down. You can have both a 401(k) and an IRA and contribute the max to both (though at high incomes you lose the ability to deduct IRA contributions). These accounts are tax advantaged because you only pay taxes once.
The other alternative: just invest it in tax-efficient investments. You will have limited tax-deferral options outside of your 401k, but don't let that limit you. You can invest in a variety of ETFs, stocks and mutual funds for growth, and tax-free investments like municipal bonds as you get older and need to draw income.
As a general rule, diversification means carrying sufficient amounts in cash equivalents, stocks, bonds, and real estate. An emergency fund should have six months income (conservative) or expenses (less conservative) in some kind of cash equivalent (like a savings account). As you approach retirement, that number should increase. At retirement, it should be something like five years of expenses. At that time, it is no longer an emergency fund, it's your everyday expenses. You can use a pension or social security to offset your effective monthly expenses for the purpose of that fund. You should five years net expenses after income in cash equivalents after retirement. The normal diversification ratio for stocks, bonds, and real estate is something like 60% stocks, 20% bonds, and 20% real estate. You can count the equity in your house as part of the real estate share. For most people, the house will be sufficient diversification into real estate. That said, you should not buy a second home as an investment. Buy the second home if you can afford it and if it makes you happy. Then consider if you want to keep your first home as an investment or just sell it now. Look at your overall ownership to determine if you are overweighted into real estate. Your primary house is not an investment, but it is an ownership. If 90% of your net worth is real estate, then you are probably underinvested in securities like stocks and bonds. 50% should probably be an upper bound, and 20% real estate would be more diversified. If your 401k has an employer match, you should almost certainly put enough in it to get the full match. I prefer a ratio of 70-75% stocks to 25-30% bonds at all ages. This matches the overall market diversification. Rebalance to stay in that range regularly, possibly by investing in the underweight security. Adding real estate to that, my preference would be for real estate to be roughly a quarter of the value of securities. So around 60% stocks, 20% bonds, and 20% real estate. A 50% share for real estate is more aggressive but can work.
These small items of plastic tend to be so convenient to utilize, it is therefore very easy to overlook that it is actual cash we are coping with whenever you whip these away to pay out for any transaction, big or even little. In spite of the great resolves in order to shell out balance away swiftly, the truth is that it usually will not, and wind up having to pay much more regarding issues compared to make paid off when you made use of money. 4. Chip in towards the Pension Program When the company has a 401(k) plan and a person do not contribute to this, you are running away through one of the finest discounts right there. Request the boss if they have the 401(k) plan (or even comparable program), and sign up right now. In the event that you happen to be contributing, attempt to increase the contribution. In case the company will not provide the pension program, think about the Individual retirement account. 5. Make Financial Savings Program You might have discovered this before: Pay for yourself first! If perhaps a person delay till you have satisfied most ones monetary commitments prior to finding what is remaining around for saving, probabilities tend to be you will in no way possess a wholesome financial savings accounts or perhaps opportunities. Deal with it in order to fix apart the minimal for 5% to 10% of the income to get savings prior to shelling out the expenses. More desirable however, get cash instantly taken off through the income and deposit straight into a distinct account. 6. Make Investments! Should you are contributing the pension program and the savings account as well as one may also handle to set a number of funds in to some other ventures, all the far better. 7. Improve Ones Career Rewards Work benefits such as the 401(k) program, flexible expenditure consideration, healthcare as well as dental care coverage, and so on. are usually valued at huge money. Try to make certain you will be making the most of your own and also getting benefit of these kinds which can easily help save cash through lowering taxation or perhaps out-of-pocket expenditures. 8.
"In your situation, you probably should not cash in your IRA and 401(k). A good mortgage lender will want to see that you have ""reserves"" -- money that you could fall back on if you hit a very rough patch.  Your current savings and retirement accounts might add up to a suitable reserve. You might want to do something like this instead: By the way, instead of cashing in a 401(k), it is usually better to: This method avoids large tax penalties, and encourages you to rebuild your 401(k).  Unfortunately, your large debt balances might prevent you from getting the PLOC.  But even in the worst case scenario (where you cannot use a PLOC to pay off a 401(k) balloon payment), it postpones the tax hit until after the balloon payment."
rollover funds only mean the funds one was foolish enough to first roll into this 401(k). With no matching, and need for cash, I'd stop depositing to that account. But, from details you gave, you can't withdraw that money.
There are several things being mixed up in the questions being asked. The expense ratio charged by the mutual fund is built into the NAV per share of the fund, and you do not see the charge explicitly mentioned as a deduction on your 401k statement (or in the statement received from the mutual fund in a non-401k situation). The expense ratio is listed in the fund's prospectus, and should also have been made available to you in the literature about the new 401k plan that your employer is setting up. Mutual fund fees (for things like having a small balance, or for that matter, sales charges if any of the funds in the 401k are load funds, God forbid) are different. Some load mutual funds waive the sales charge load for 401k participants, while some may not. Actually, it all depends on how hard the employer negotiates with the 401k administration company who handles all the paperwork and the mutual fund company with which the 401k administration company negotiates. (In the 1980s, Fidelity Magellan (3% sales load) was a hot fund, but my employer managed to get it as an option in our plan with no sales load: it helped that my employer was large and could twist arms more easily than a mom-and-pop outfit or Solo 401k plan could). A long long time ago in a galaxy far far away, my first ever IRA contribution of $2000 into a no-load mutual fund resulted in a $25 annual maintenance fee, but the law allowed the payment of this fee separately from the $2000 if the IRA owner wished to do so. (If not, the $25 would reduce the IRA balance (and no, this did not count as a premature distribution from the IRA). Plan expenses are what the 401k administration company charges the employer for running the plan (and these expenses are not necessarily peanuts; a 401k plan is not something that needs just a spreadsheet -- there is lots of other paperwork that the employee never gets to see). In some cases, the employer pays the entire expense as a cost of doing business; in other cases, part is paid by the employer and the rest is passed on to the employees.
Dollar cost averaging is an great way to diversify your investment risk. There's mainly 2 things you want to achieve when you're saving for retirement: 1) Keep your principal investment; 2) Grow it. The best methods recommended by most financial institutions are as follows: 1) Diversification; 2) Re-balance. There are a lot of additional recommendations, but these are my main take away. When you dollar cost average, you're essentially diversifying your exchange risk between the value of the funds you're investing. Including the ups and downs of the value of the underlying asset, may actually be re-balancing. Picking your asset portfolio: 1) You generally want to include within your 401k or any other invest, classes of investments that do not always move in total correlation as this allows you to diversify risk; 2) I'm making a lot of assumptions here - since you may have already picked your asset classes. Consider utilizing the following to tell you when to buy or sell your underlying investment: 1) Google re-balance excel sheet to find several examples of re-balance tools to help you always buy low and sell high; 2) Enter your portfolio investment; 3) Utilize the movement to invest in the underlying assets based on market movement; and 4) Execute in an emotionless way and stick to your plan. Example - Facts 1) I have 1 CAD and 1 USD in my 401k. Plan I will invest 1 dollar in the ratio of 50/50 - forever. Let's start in 2011 since we were closer to par: 2010 - 1 CAD (value 1 USD) and 1 USD (value 1 USD) = 50/50 ratio 2011 start - 1 CAD ( value .8 USD) and 1 USD (value 1 USD) = 40/60 ratio 2011 - rebalance - invest 1 USD as follows purchase .75 CAD (.60 USD) and purchase .40 USD = total of 1 USD reinvested 2011 end - 1.75 CAD (value 1.4USD) and 1.4 USD (value 1.4 USD) - 50/50 ratio As long as the fundamentals of your underlying assets (i.e. you're not expecting hyperinflation or your asset to approach 0), this approach will always build value over time since you're always buying low and selling high while dollar averaging.
I see you've marked an answer as accepted but I MUST tell you that STOPPING your 401k contribution all together is a bad idea. Your company match is 100% rate of return(or 50% depending on structure). I don't care what market you look at, or how bad a loan you take out, you will not receive 100% rate of return, or be charged 100% interest. Further, taking out a loan against your 401k effectively does two things: It is a loan that must be repaid according to the terms of your 401k AND in every 401k I've ever encountered, you cannot make contributions to the 401k until the loan is repaid. This in effect stops your contributions, and will almost certainly save you very little on your interest rates on your current loans. I have 4 potential solutions that may help achieve your goal without sacrificing your 401k match and transferring the debt from one lender to another, but they are conditional. Is your company match 100% up to 4% of your salary, or 50% of your contribution (up to a limit you have not yet reached)? This is important. If it is 100% up to 4%, stop committing the additional 4% and use that to pay down your debt...and after ward set up that 4% as auto pay into an IRA, not into the 401k. An IRA will make you more money because YOU have control over its management, not your employer. If it is 50% match, contribute until the match is met because you cannot get 50% rate of return anywhere, then take your additional monies and get an IRA. As far as your debt, in this scenario simply suck it up and pay it as is. You will lose far more than you gain by stopping your contributions. If you simply must reduce your expenses by 150$ month try refinancing the mortgage and rolling the 6500$ into it. If you get a big enough drop in the interest rate you could still end up paying less. OR If you cannot make the gain there, try snowballing the three payments. You do this by calling your student loan vendor and telling them you need to make much smaller payments, like even zero depending on the type of loan.
The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated. - Twain I use index funds in my retirement planning, but don't stick to just S&P 500 index funds. Suppose I balance my money 50/50 between Small Cap and Large Cap and say I have $10,000.  I'd buy $5,000 of an S&P Index fund and $5,000 of a Russell 2000 index fund. Now, fast forward a year.  Suppose the S&P Index fund has $4900 and the Russell Index fund has $5200.   Sell $150 of Russell Index Fund and buy $150 of S&P 500 Index funds to balance.  Repeat that activity every 12-18 months.  This lets you be hands off (index fund-style) on your investment choices but still take advantage of great markets.   This way, I can still rebalance to sell high and buy low, but I'm not stressing about an individual stock or mutual fund choice. You can repeat this model with more categories, I chose two for the simplicity of explaining.
"I would create a ""Rollover IRA"".   These IRAs are designed to take funds from a 401k and allow you to invest them without incurring a cash out penalty nor a tax due.   You will have more choices than if you leave it at your old 401k. If you cash out the 401k, you'll have much less to invest ($1500 - penalty - taxes) vs. doing a rollover 401k where you'll still have $1500 to invest. Then, once the money is inside the new Rollover IRA you can invest in whatever you please.   If you want to invest in Vanguard funds, I recommend opening the Rollover IRA at Vanguard.  Here is Vanguard's information page about rollovers from 401ks: https://investor.vanguard.com/what-we-offer/401k-rollovers/401k-403b-to-ira-rollover-benefits When you next change jobs and have another 401k with funds in it, you can roll it into the same Rollover IRA."
You might want to bring this fancy new IRS rule to your employer's attention. If your employer sets it up, an After-Tax 401(k) Plan allows employees to contribute after-tax money above the $18k/year limit into a special 401(k) that allows deferral of tax on all earnings until withdrawal in retirement. Now, if you think about it, that's not all that special on its own. Since you've already paid tax on the contribution, you could imitate the above plan all by yourself by simply investing in things that generate no income until the day you sell them and then just waiting to sell them until retirement. So basically you're locking up money until retirement and getting zero benefit. But here's the cool part: the new IRS rule says you can roll over these contributions into a Roth 401(k) or Roth IRA with no extra taxes or penalties! And a Roth plan is much better, because you don't have to pay tax ever on the earnings. So you can contribute to this After-Tax plan and then immediately roll over into a Roth plan and start earning tax-free forever. Now, the article I linked above gets some important things slightly wrong. It seems to suggest that your company is not allowed to create a brand new 401(k) bucket for these special After-Tax contributions. And that means that you would have to mingle pre-tax and post-tax dollars in your existing Traditional 401(k), which would just completely destroy the usefulness of the rollover to Roth. That would make this whole thing worthless. However, I know from personal experience that this is not true. Your company can most definitely set up a separate After-Tax plan to receive all of these new contributions. Then there's no mingling of pre-tax and post-tax dollars, and you can do the rollover to Roth with the click of a button, no taxes or penalties owed. Now, this new plan still sits under the overall umbrella of your company's total retirement plan offerings.
Most companies put the company match in your account each paycheck, but your are not generally vested for the match. If you leave before the specified time period then they pull back part of the matching funds.  I knew somebody who did something similar back in the 1980's with their 401K. They put in 8% of their paycheck after taxes; a 100% match was deposited; then they pulled out the employees contribution every quarter. They did this for the 10 years I knew them. It avoided any tax implications, and they were still saving 8% of their pay for retirement.
Am I thinking correctly and can I do the 2 separate withdrawals? Yes. Is there anything else I'm missing?  Yes. For starters - instead of withdrawing 401k - why don't you take a loan out of it? This can be dangerous, but also can be beneficial - both for the same reason. The beneficial part is this: you don't pay neither the income tax nor the penalty on the amount you take out as a loan. I.e.: immediate saving of 35%. You can also get the full loan amount (up to 50% of the 401k balance) at once, no need to wait for the next year. You'll be saving on the difference on the APR between the credit card debt (which is usually huge) and the 401k loan (which is usually very low), and that will allow you to consolidate the debt and cover it quicker. The dangerous part is also taxes. In case you lose your job - you have to pay off the loan immediately (within 3 months). If you don't - the remaining balance will be considered as a taxable distribution and you'll owe the 25%+10% on them. But - if you don't lose your job, you win. And repaying the loan will revert your 401k balances back to the full amount, while with withdrawal - you cannot put it back (after 60 days are over, at least). So keep that in mind. Check with your 401k plan provider on the loan terms and costs (they'll charge some symbolic amount for managing the loan for you).
On my quarterly statement and the 401K plan website I can see the vesting for various categories. They total all these up and report the total balance and the vested balance. If I do the math I discover that the vested balance is equal to A + B + D + (60% of C) For my company at least, if I was to leave now I would get 60% of the Company match, which does include significant gains. This document for the Department of Labor discuss many aspects of 401K plans including vesting. In a defined contribution plan such as a 401(k) plan, you are always   100 percent vested in your own contributions to a plan, and in any   subsequent earnings from your contributions. However, in most defined   contribution plans you may have to work several years before you are   vested in the employer’s matching contributions. (There are   exceptions, such as the SIMPLE 401(k) and safe harbor 401(k), in which   you are immediately vested in all required employer contributions. You   also vest immediately in the SIMPLE IRA and the SEP.) Currently, employers have a choice of two different vesting schedules   for employer matching 401(k) contributions, which are shown in Table   2. Your employer may use a schedule in which employees are 100 percent vested in employer contributions after 3 years of service (cliff   vesting). Under graduated vesting, an employee must be at least 20   percent vested after 2 years, 40 percent after 3 years, 60 percent   after 4 years, 80 percent after 5 years, and 100 percent after 6   years. If your automatic enrollment 401(k) plan requires employer   contributions, you vest in those contributions after 2 years.   Automatic enrollment 401(k) plans with optional matching contributions   follow one of the vesting schedules noted above.