Stock Investing

[MWil23]

My overall combined portfolio between my indexed mutual funds and Traditional IRA are down $10K+ since January. 

Stagflation is brutal right now.

[AkronsWitness]

On 5/21/2022 at 6:22 PM, biggie. said:

My brother lost $7k in his Roth. Oof.

So heres my question from somebody who is far from a financial guru.

I started a new job in JAN this year. I work for the state now so I no longer have a traditional 401k and instead have a state funded pension called Opers. My 401k that I have had for 11 years is just sitting out in the ether doing nothing since switching jobs since I am no longer feeding into it and its not 'active'.

Since its not active anymore since JAN and I havent touched it since then, did I get saved from everything tanking or is there a good chance it took a hit?

Also, WTF do I do with it? lol

Edited May 23, 2022 by AkronsWitness

[biggie.]

11 minutes ago, AkronsWitness said:

So heres my question from somebody who is far from a financial guru.

I started a new job in JAN this year. I work for the state now so I no longer have a traditional 401k and instead have a state funded pension called Opers. My 401k that I have had for 11 years is just sitting out in the ether doing nothing since switching jobs since I am no longer feeding into it and its not 'active'.

Since its not active anymore since JAN and I havent touched it since then, did I get saved from everything tanking or is there a good chance it took a hit?

Also, WTF do I do with it? lol

It should still go up and down with the market.

At this point just leave it alone and pull from it when you retire.

[MWil23]

27 minutes ago, AkronsWitness said:

So heres my question from somebody who is far from a financial guru.

I started a new job in JAN this year. I work for the state now so I no longer have a traditional 401k and instead have a state funded pension called Opers. My 401k that I have had for 11 years is just sitting out in the ether doing nothing since switching jobs since I am no longer feeding into it and its not 'active'.

Since its not active anymore since JAN and I havent touched it since then, did I get saved from everything tanking or is there a good chance it took a hit?

Also, WTF do I do with it? lol

Often times you can roll it over into OPERS if you are 💯 certain you’re going to be there for the long haul 

[AkronsWitness]

30 minutes ago, MWil23 said:

Often times you can roll it over into OPERS if you are 💯 certain you’re going to be there for the long haul 

Yeah thats the issue, I dont know what my future holds and its hard to make a decision about by career 5+ years out. They def. make it more appealing to stay there for 10+ years to become fully vested and Ohio St. does everything in their power to encourage people to stay with low turnover.

The one piece of advice I got was to go to Fidelity and put my old 401k into a Roth IRA so I will have OPERS and a Roth. 

Edited May 23, 2022 by AkronsWitness

[bcb1213]

got some nvda at 163 this morning.  Been beaten down pretty good.  Think I can make a quick 10-20% in a month or so and hop out

[MWil23]

48 minutes ago, AkronsWitness said:

Yeah thats the issue, I dont know what my future holds and its hard to make a decision about by career 5+ years out. They def. make it more appealing to stay there for 10+ years to become fully vested and Ohio St. does everything in their power to encourage people to stay with low turnover.

The one piece of advice I got was to go to Fidelity and put my old 401k into a Roth IRA so I will have OPERS and a Roth. 

We did the "reverse" with my wife. We rolled her STRS money that was sitting there collecting 0% anything and doing nothing for her into a traditional IRA.

Some companies will also allow a 403B or ROTH or whatever equivalent, and IMO, as long as you can roll it into that, it makes sense to do so.

This sounds like some advice for @ramssuperbowl99 as well, but I have MY STRS (teacher retirement), a mutual fund portfolio (separate), and my wife has a traditional IRA, as well as separate retirement match into her work portfolio. So, we have 4 diverse portfolio's that are at least "working for us" now as opposed to sitting there doing nothing at all.

[ramssuperbowl99]

2 hours ago, AkronsWitness said:

So heres my question from somebody who is far from a financial guru.

I started a new job in JAN this year. I work for the state now so I no longer have a traditional 401k and instead have a state funded pension called Opers. My 401k that I have had for 11 years is just sitting out in the ether doing nothing since switching jobs since I am no longer feeding into it and its not 'active'.

Since its not active anymore since JAN and I havent touched it since then, did I get saved from everything tanking or is there a good chance it took a hit?

Also, WTF do I do with it? lol

Rolling it into an IRA is the way to go. It'll give you the same tax benefits as your 401k, but you'll be able to choose the investments directly instead of being limited by what your 401k plan provider offers.

If you want to use Fidelity (that's who I use), you can open an account with them and request a transfer of assets. You give them the account info and authorize it, and they automatically go transfer everything/close the account with no tax change or action needed.

 

Whether it's roth or traditional will depend on whether you contributed to your 401k with pre-tax or post-tax dollars (usually it's pretax). If you've got both, they'll just roll over each part accordingly. 

[ramssuperbowl99]

2 hours ago, biggie. said:

It should still go up and down with the market.

At this point just leave it alone and pull from it when you retire.

You can do this, but you're limited to 401k plan investment choices and the old fee structures. Usually worthwhile to rollover.

[MWil23]

1 hour ago, MWil23 said:

We did the "reverse" with my wife. We rolled her STRS money that was sitting there collecting 0% anything and doing nothing for her into a traditional IRA.

Some companies will also allow a 403B or ROTH or whatever equivalent, and IMO, as long as you can roll it into that, it makes sense to do so.

This sounds like some advice for @ramssuperbowl99 as well, but I have MY STRS (teacher retirement), a mutual fund portfolio (separate), and my wife has a traditional IRA, as well as separate retirement match into her work portfolio. So, we have 4 diverse portfolio's that are at least "working for us" now as opposed to sitting there doing nothing at all.

The reason we did a traditional IRA vs. a 403B was that I/we got to pick what investments to roll that money into, whereas a 403B we were limited significantly, so that IRA made more sense for us to go the "aggressive" route based upon us being 20+ years away from retirement. 

[AkronsWitness]

2 hours ago, ramssuperbowl99 said:

Rolling it into an IRA is the way to go. It'll give you the same tax benefits as your 401k, but you'll be able to choose the investments directly instead of being limited by what your 401k plan provider offers.

If you want to use Fidelity (that's who I use), you can open an account with them and request a transfer of assets. You give them the account info and authorize it, and they automatically go transfer everything/close the account with no tax change or action needed.

 

Whether it's roth or traditional will depend on whether you contributed to your 401k with pre-tax or post-tax dollars (usually it's pretax). If you've got both, they'll just roll over each part accordingly. 

Im wondering if this is the correct time to do that if the market is tanking. I dont want to put my entire 401k into a Roth and then lost 5k over the summer months lol

[ramssuperbowl99]

9 minutes ago, AkronsWitness said:

Im wondering if this is the correct time to do that if the market is tanking. I dont want to put my entire 401k into a Roth and then lost 5k over the summer months lol

If you have shares, the shares will be rolled over, not your dollars. So there would be no tax implication and the timing wouldn't matter.

[LeotheLion]

5 hours ago, AkronsWitness said:

So heres my question from somebody who is far from a financial guru.

I started a new job in JAN this year. I work for the state now so I no longer have a traditional 401k and instead have a state funded pension called Opers. My 401k that I have had for 11 years is just sitting out in the ether doing nothing since switching jobs since I am no longer feeding into it and its not 'active'.

Since its not active anymore since JAN and I havent touched it since then, did I get saved from everything tanking or is there a good chance it took a hit?

Also, WTF do I do with it? lol

The one reason where it is worthwhile to keep it in your old employer's 401k plan is if you are wanting to do back-door roth contributions. Rolling over funds into a traditional IRA subjects you to the pro-rata rule and likely eliminates the back-door as an option. 

[LETSGOBROWNIES]

43 minutes ago, AkronsWitness said:

Im wondering if this is the correct time to do that if the market is tanking. I dont want to put my entire 401k into a Roth and then lost 5k over the summer months lol

Dude, just put money in there and forget it for 30 years.  The value of your 401k is irrelevant for like another 20-30 years at least.  You’re young.  It’s going to fluctuate.  You’re not actually “losing money”.

 

[MWil23]

3 hours ago, LETSGOBROWNIES said:

Dude, just put money in there and forget it for 30 years.  The value of your 401k is irrelevant for like another 20-30 years at least.  You’re young.  It’s going to fluctuate.  You’re not actually “losing money”.

 

What’s funny is that I had all of my monthly deposits sitting in a big cash account and then as soon as the market started it’s spiral this year early I basically bought it all and have continued buying.

Sure, I’m down $10K since January, but whenever the market has that uptick I’m sure I’ll be up $20K with those purchases, and that’s just at the leveling out, not to mention compounded.