[WestCoast]

Must be a Roth IRA you pay the taxes this season, 4 years 1 day later assuming you roll to Roth on December 31 you can pull tax free.

PM if you have ?'s.

NEVER keep cash locked up in 401K's if you can make them liquid fast. There is no point. If you want to keep it tax deferred you can just buy different investment vehicles and kick the payment down the road without being locked up until you can't even walk anymore. Be liquid. Be free.

Always calculate your worth based on liquid assets. Example if you have $10K in a fund, but you owe 3.5K in taxes post a pull of funds... You're really worth $6.5K. Find a way to get it out with the least taxes. Uncle Sam is always a cockblocker. If you think in terms of post tax, you'll spend more time finding ways to get them lower and of course becoming more liquid.

If you did roll to a Roth IRA, more likely than not you have to wait a bit over 4 years. I am saying December 31 2013, because this is how they run the taxes it will say you rolled it on jan 1, 2013 (tax year). So ideally you do all rollovers the last day of the year. So you only wait 4 years 1 day instead of say 5 full years if you rolled on jan 1, 2014.

The one day difference is between getting it liquid 2018 vs 2019

(05-07-2013 08:54 PM)MikeinMKE Wrote:  

(05-07-2013 06:04 PM)WestCoast Wrote:  

You work the same job your whole life?

Roll it over, on December 31 into a Roth IRA, wait 4 years and 1 day, pull out the entire principal tax free and penalty free.

Take cash and put it elsewhere. Stash hide be free and liquid. The only thing that is useful about a 401K is the match unless you're a poor saver.

(05-07-2013 05:33 PM)MikeinMKE Wrote:  

If you're counting 401k I'm way over but I'm also older than most of you guys. I'd gladly trade in my 401k value to be 24 again

Plus I really do believe that as America gets more and more liberal/handout driven that the government is going to raid 401k's worth over $2.5 million or thereabouts to "save" social security in the next 20 years (like we saw Cyprus do recently with bank accounts worth over 2MM Euros or whatever the figure was). I've already taken the step of lowering my bi-monthly investments to the minimum matching level of 6%. Anything more is kind of silly IMO because it's going to get stolen by the US Gov't. I realize that I sound like Glen Beck or something and I'm generally not a conservative or a conspiracy theorist. I just hate that all these lazy fucks have multiplied so aggressively/quickly that they now control national elections and therefore will control public and monetary policy within the next generation or two.

I'm going to try and be as diverse as possible as I age (not too much money in any one entity - have it spread out between 401k, IRA, real estate, kids' trusts (if/when I ever have any), offshore accounts, business ventures, etc.)

It's crazy how I have an MBA and I don't know anything like that I feel so fucking stupid sometimes. So I rolled my previous employers 401k into Ira 2 years ago so in 2 more years I can w/d it penalty free for real estate or to smart small business??