I'm not sure if this will apply to your father but for the masses here there is a little known fact about 401k's when you leave your employer. If you have a 401k with a former employer (and it's typically a poor assortment of investment choices) you can transfer it to a traditional IRA account at a brokerage of your choosing, Schwab, Fidelity, etc. If you do a "trustee to trustee exchange" this is a tax free event for you. The money can't touch your hands or go through your bank account, if it does it's a taxable even to you. It must be transferred directly from the 401k administrator to the brokerage handling the traditional IRA account. This opens up the possibility of investing in anything you choose, through that Traditional IRA account. The key is you can no longer be employed with that company that the 401k is with (you can't do this while you still work for the company). I just did this and didn't even change employers. The company I work for was bought by another company so my job is still the same but I still was able to take advantage of this and moved all of my 401k over to my Schwab Traditional IRA which I can now invest the "Investing 102 way".
My guess is that this does not apply to your father since he is now back employed by the company tied to the 401k but he might want to check since I'm not sure. Schwab or any of the brokerage firms that do this can answer that question for him. I talk to a lot of people that still maintain past 401k's with previous employers and the poor investment choices that usually come with them when they could be taking advantage of this perfectly legitimate "trick" (if done correctly).
|