401k Rollover - on my own or through my financial advisor?
Call up vanguard and tell them you want to do a rollover.  They walk you through the process.  Spend some time on reading up on asset allocation and benefits of indexing.   1.5% every year is steep and what do you have in return?  The advisor's word that he'll make it up.  How much did he manage to return during the last lost decade?   It's a lose-win situation.  He'll get his 1.5% no matter how the market does but that's not the deal you are getting. Go with Vanguard.  You are already thinking correctly - diversification, rebalancing, low cost! I thought the Finance Buff made a pretty solid argument for a financial advisor the other day: http://thefinancebuff.com/the-average-investor-should-use-an-investment-advisor-how-to-find-one.html But 1.5% is too expensive. The blog post at Finance Buff suggests several alternatives. He also has the great suggestion to use Vanguard's cheap financial planning service if you go with Vanguard. A lot of investing advice fails to consider the human factor. Sure it'd be great to rebalance exactly every 6 months and take precisely the amount of risk to theoretically maximize returns. But, yeah right. It's well-known that in the aggregate individual investors go to cash near market bottoms and then buy near market tops. It's not that they don't know the right thing to do necessarily, it's just that the emotional aspect is stronger than any of us expect. You shouldn't rely on sticking to your investments any more than you rely on sticking to your diet and exercise program ;-) the theoretically optimal solution is not the real-world-people-are-involved optimal solution. My own blog post on this suggests a balanced fund rather than a financial advisor, but I think the right financial advisor could well be a better approach: http://blog.ometer.com/2010/11/10/take-risks-in-life-for-savings-choose-a-balanced-fund/ Anyway, I think people are too quick to think of the main risk as volatility, and to think of investing as simple. Sure in theory it is simple. But the main risk is yourself. Fear at market bottoms, greed at market tops, laziness the rest of the time... so there's potential value in taking yourself out of the picture. The human part is the part that isn't simple. On whether to get a financial advisor in general (not just for investments), see also: What exactly can a financial advisor do for me, and is it worth the money?
For a true financial advisor 'track record' consists of more than just returns.  Is this person helping their client make the right investment choices, savings choices, tax efficient choices, EXPENSE choices?  Is the advisor keeping me honest with myself, helping me make my goals realistic, my investment options realistic, etc.?  Is the advisor helping me stay disciplined?  For example, if an advisor has a good track record in the market, but has the investments in the wrong types of accounts and is losing too much to taxes, he/she is a bad advisor.  If the advisor is not considering the time horizon of the investor, he/she is a bad advisor.  If the advisor is not helping the client understand their true risk tolerance, he/she is a bad advisor.  All of this regardless of their track record.  Edit: You also seem to be talking about wealth managers.  I am talking about financial managers.  I believe very few wealth managers are actually worth their costs (and most are just blow horn prognosticators) whereas financial advisors are financial educators to clients. It depends how you do it.  If you roll it from your 401k directly to a Roth then you will have to pay the taxes.  The contributions to the 401k are tax deferred.  Meaning you do not owe taxes on the money until you collect it.  Roth contributions are post tax but the gains are not taxed so long as they are disbursed under acceptable conditions according to the regulations. If you roll it directly from the 401k to a regular tax deferred IRA you should be able to do that with out penalties or taxes.  You will still have to pay the taxes at disbursement. If you have the money disbursed to you directly then you will have to pay the penalties, fees, and taxes.  Your contributions to an IRA will then be subject to limitations based on the IRA.  It will literally be exactly like you are taking money from your pocket to invest in the IRA.   Your company should give you the option of a rollover check.  This check will be made out to you but it will not be able to be deposited in a regular account or cashed.  It will only be redeemable for deposit into a retirement account that meets the regulatory requirements of the 401k rollover criteria.  I believe the check I received a few years ago was only good for 60 days.  I recall that after 60 days that check was void and I would receive a standard disbursement and would be subject to fees and penalties.  I am not sure if that was the policy of T.Rowe Price or if that is part of the regulation. Nobody here really answered your question.  The custodian of the 401k determines what funds and investment options are available within that 401k.  So if they're eliminating company stock as an option then they can absolutely make you sell out of it.    You may be able to do an in service rollover and transfer your funds to an individual ira but that's not particularly common among 401k administrators.   Aside from that I'd ask why do you want to hold company stock anyway?  Generally I'd advise against this as its imposing a ton of risk on your financial future.  If your company tanks you're out of a job, which sucks.  But it sucks even more if your company tanks and your 401k loses a ton of value at the same time.   Edit: I see you asked who benefits as well.  It may just be a situation of no benefit at all.  Perhaps the plan didn't have enough people investing in company stock to make the option cost effective.  Maybe the administrator decided that allowing people to take on that amount of risk was not in their best interest(it's not).  Could be a ton of reasons but it's unlikely the company did so out of greed.  There isn't a lot of financial benefit for them there. "Technically, this doesn't seem like a scam, but I don't think the system is beneficial.  They use a lot of half-truths to convince you that their product is right for you. Some of the arguments presented and my thoughts. Don't buy term and invest the rest because you can't predict how much you'll earn from the ""rest""   Also Don't invest in a 401k because you can't predict how much you'll earn They are correct that you won't know exactly how much you'll have due to stock market, but that doesn't mean the stock market is a bad place to put your money.  Investing in a 401k is risky because of the harsh 401k withdrawal rules  Yes, 401ks have withdrawal rules (can't typically start before 59.5, must start by 70.5) but those rules don't hamper my investing style in any way.    Most Term Life Insurance policies don't pay out  They are correct again, but their conclusions are wrong. Yes, most people don't die while you have a term insurance policy which is why Term life insurance is relatively cheap.   But they aren't arguing you don't need insurance, just that you need their insurance which is ""better"" You need the Guaranteed growth they offer  The chart used to illustrate their guaranteed growth includes non-guaranteed dividends.   They invest $10,000 per year for 36 years and end up with $1,000,000.   That's a 5% return!  I use 10% for my estimate of stock market performance, but let's say it's only 8%.   The same $10,000 per year results in over $2 Million dollars.  Using 10.5% (average return of the S&P 500 over it's lifetime) the result is a staggering $3.7 MILLION.   So if I'm looking at $3.7M vs. $1M, It costs me $2.7 Million dollars to give me the same coverage as my term life policy. That's one expensive Term Life Insurance policy. My personal favorite: Blindly following the advice of Wall Street and financial “gurus” such as Dave Ramsey and Suze Orman got you where you are. Are you happy with the state of your finances? Do you still believe their fairytale, “Buy Term (insurance) and Invest the Difference”?  Yes, I sure do believe that fairytale and I'm prospering quite well thank you. :) While I don't think this is a scam, it's outrageously expensive and not a good financial choice." I would definitely recommend contributing to an IRA. You don't know for sure you'll get hired full-time and be eligible for the 401(k) with match, so you should save for retirement on your own. I would recommend Roth over Traditional IRA in your situation, because let's say you do get hired full-time. Since the company offers a retirement plan, your 2015 Traditional IRA contribution would no longer be deductible at your income level (assuming you're single), and non-deductible Traditional IRAs aren't a very good deal (see here and here). If there's a decent chance you would get hired, this factor would override the pre-tax versus post-tax debate for me. At your income level you could go either way on that anyway. A Solo 401(k) would be worth looking into if you wanted to increase your contribution limit beyond what IRAs offer, but given that it sounds like you're just starting out saving for retirement, and you may be eligible for a 401(k) soon, it's probably overkill at this point. You generally cant roll funds from a 401k with a company you're still employed with.  Some companies allow it depending on the custodial agreement but it's rare.  Generally you need to wait until retirement or separation to roll funds out of a 401k. No, sorry. A change of 401(k) administrator is not an out, otherwise many would flee a bad plan. I'd suggest you only deposit up to the match, but use an IRA if you'd like to save more. A plan with high fees can easily negate the tax benefits and then some. Things are more complicated for non-spouse beneficiaries of a 401(k) account. If you have not deposited the money yet, you may wish to contact the plan administrator and have them do a trustee-to-trustee transfer. If you take possession of the money (by depositing that check) then it will be considered a distribution and won't be eligible for a roll-over deposit. Required minimum distributions will still apply, but those are based on when your mother would have reached the age 70.5, rather than 62. It's not clear to me why they chose that number unless it was something specific to the rules of her 401(k) plan.