Simplifying Retirement Accounts

[djjones]

I'm married to a lovely lady who's a 1099 MD. We're working to simplify our retirement accounts and get them under one "roof".

Current Accounts:
-Voya (Wife)- Old 401k & Old 403B
-Betterment (Both of us) - 2 Roth IRA's
-Schwab (Me) - Old 401k

New Accounts Opening Soon:
-Wife will be contributing to Solo 401k (undecided location)
-I will have an Employee 401k with T Rowe Price.

What would you do in our situation if the goal is to keep things simple?

[Future Proof MD]

Hey Dustin, I think your situation is already pretty simple.  You won't have a choice in employer-sponsored plans.  So I would just have one place for all of your individual accounts - personally I keep most of my non-employer stuff with Vanguard and Betterment.

[jfoxcpacfp]

Choose the firm you're most comfortable with and consolidate there. Not a fan of Vanguard, like Fidelity ok, and TDA b/c they don't sell proprietary mutual funds and cater to fee-only planners. Of course, your 401k will remain with TRP, which is a company I really like.

• Also recommend your lovely lady (I think you're very sweet) roll out her 401k and 403b to her new SOLO-k.


• Plus, she should hire you for admin work, open a SOLO-k for you, and you can roll your old 401k into it.

 

[Craigy]

Yeah the nature of the "individual" retirement account means that you won't be able to combine you and your wife's accounts.

You could theoretically roll over your old account into the employer-sponsored plan, but you'll likely do better with expenses and plan choices if you keep your non-employer plans separate with Vanguard et al.  You could also theoretically convert everything to Roth which would net you even fewer accounts, but that will cost money, or you could get rid of your roth accounts altogether with an appropriate exception.

I'd probably open your wife's individual 401k with Vanguard, and roll her old accounts into that, move your 401k from Schwab to a Vanguard IRA, and move the Betterment Roths to Vanguard as well.  You'd only go from seven total accounts down to five, but you'd only have one account under a different roof, and theoretically only three statements coming in the mail.  And far fewer logins and passwords, secret questions and photos, password resets and security codes.

I'm a pretty big Vanguard fan so that's my bias.  Expense ratios aside, when I have dealt with them for various clients, I have been very impressed.