Also by Nora Peterson

Meet me at the station...

Excerpt

Extreme Makeover—Retirement Style

Meet Joanne Moneymaker—Jo, for short. Jo is not much different from you or me. She might be a little older. Or she might be a little younger. She might earn a little bit more than you. Or she might earn a little less. Still, her goals for retirement are very similar to your own. She wants to accumulate sufficient assets to secure a comfortable and worry-free retirement.

For the past 12 years, Jo worked as a budget analyst for a Fortune 1000 homebuilder that specializes in developing resort-style retirement communities. That was until she lost her job when the company reorganized and downsized.

Jo was lucky. She landed on her feet with a better job. Her new position with a start-up construction business pays more and offers her a better career path than the old company. The only problem in her life right now is the $200,000 question—what to do with the funds in her former employer’s retirement plan. It doesn’t sound like a terribly difficult decision on the surface, but the laws governing retirement savings are complex, and there are very few do-overs where the IRS is concerned, so Jo wants to consider her options carefully.

When Opportunity Knocks . . .

Sometimes life’s blessings come disguised as a kick in the pants. So it was with Jo. It’s just that she was having a hard time recognizing it, as she sat at her desk reading and re-reading the small mountain of paperwork she had been handed, along with that ugly little pink slip that thanked her for her service and wished her well in her future endeavors. Each sheet of paper seemed to demand one more decision from her, and the one outlining what she had to with her 401(k) had her completely stumped.

Several friends had told her to roll it into the 401(k) with her new employer. Another told her to roll it into her Roth IRA. None could explain why one recommendation was better than the other. One thing she knew for sure was that her clock was ticking.

The company’s policy gave her a deadline for submitting rollover paperwork, or they would write her a check for the balance in her account. With only a month to go before her deadline, Jo had pretty much decided that rolling one 401(k) into another 401(k) seemed like the simplest and most logical answer.