Preserve Your IRA
Investment
Avoid Losing Your
Savings to Multiple Annual Fees
Recent tax law changes allow you to roll over, tax-free, any traditional
IRA account into a qualified retirement plan - such as a §401(k) or
§403(b) - allowing you to consolidate your various IRA accounts with your
retirement plan. This will save you from paying an annual fee for each of
your IRA's and from getting mailed an assortment of account statements for
several IRA accounts.
This preserves your IRA assets because most IRA trustees (bank, brokerage
house, etc.) charge an annual fee just for maintaining an IRA account with
a balance below their pre-set minimum. Generally, the IRA trustee will
send you a notice to pay the fee and if you don't, the money is deducted
from your IRA account. This can be very expensive if the account has a
small balance. If an account balance is $1,000, then a $50 fee would be
equal to losing 5% of your account. Unfortunately that $50 is gone
forever.
You can avoid
losing your IRA to annual fees by transferring the IRA account to your
retirement plan. First, however, contact your plan administrator to get
the necessary paperwork and to make sure your retirement plan accepts IRA
transfers (not all plans are required to accept IRA rollovers).
