A recent article on Yahoo! Finance lists four retirement regrets and costly mistakes that you should avoid. One of these mistakes is having too many accounts. ‘The most I’ve seen is 16 different retirement accounts at different institutions. It becomes overwhelming. So while they’re trying to have this nest egg, what ends up happening is they have a bunch of scrambled eggs. They have things all over the place, and they laugh when we talk about this, but it is a source of concern because they just tend to not open those statements.’
While 16 retirement accounts is likely excessive, there can be good reasons to have more than one retirement account. For example, with our clients there are many times in which it makes sense not to rollover their 401k into an IRA.
Depending on your financial situation and what accounts you hold, account consolidation can simplify the management of your portfolio. This can reduce stress and confusion, especially when you are transitioning your portfolio into an income stream for retirement. For example, just because you invest in many different mutual funds doesn’t mean that each of those needs to be a separate account. When it makes sense to consolidate, we typically use a brokerage account with Pershing Advisor Solutions, which allows access to investments from many different companies (like a department store instead of a one brand store). Please contact us today to learn more about our investment management service, or if you have any questions about how consolidating your accounts could benefit you.
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