In that case you have another $8k you could be putting in an IRA.

And you could potentially be contributing more to your 401ks through your work, up to the $31k cap.

Excellent! I can happily divert $8k of the current contribution to an external IRA, if that brings me a better return.

I'm working on getting to that 401k max... other household expenses have that at bay for now, though.

Keep good hard copies of all your contributions if you have a ROTH through work, especially if there is a company match. The match will go into the traditional part, while your contribution goes to the ROTH. When you take the money out for any reason, e.g. rollover or withdrawal, you will need to know what was what for tax reasons.

Over the long haul what you get to invest in matters and you should check. But over the short term I wouldn't get overly excited over your investment returns IF you have a match program as noted in the comments above in a brief way.
Let's assume you have a very tradional match....
like dollar for dollar till you hit 3% (that's a 100% return!) and .50 till you hit 6% of your contributions. That return will be far in excess of anything else you can do with your money. So if you have a match do that first and foremost.

quote:

Originally posted by hrcjon:
like dollar for dollar till you hit 3% (that's a 100% return!) and .50 till you hit 6% of your contributions. That return will be far in excess of anything else you can do with your money. So if you have a match do that first and foremost.

That's true. And for clarity: the company matches dollar for dollar up to 5%. So that's 5% of my salary going into the traditional part of the 401k, right off the bat.

I'm currently putting in 23%... 5% to get the match, no questions asked. The remainder goes to max the Roth portion, and then to fund more of the traditional portion.

My simple-headed thought is this: I'd like to put in enough to get the match and to max the Roth, then take the rest of the investable dollars and put them somewhere that'll get me a better return.

quote:

Originally posted by 6guns:

I'm feeling leery about your 401k administrator...and HR Dept.

I second your feelings given the inability to select funds and the non-name brand 401k administrator company.

All the concerns about tax disasters for early withdrawals before 59.5, 55, etc. in this thread are applicable, but there is a big difference in a WITHDRAWAL/DISTRIBUTION and a ROLLOVER.

The latter can be much more lenient, but in many plans may not be available until a certain age. However a plan can be designed to allow for rollover of certain plan assets.

Generally allowed for profit sharing and safe harbor contributions, but not deferrals. May not a big help for OP, but may be an option for others.

We actually modified our group plan to allow exactly this, and immediately had about 4 of our 30 participants roll out maximum amount available to IRA managed by "their guy."

You have some good advice here,but suggest consulting with a CPA who deals primarily with retirement plans. I saved a lot and stayed out of the IRS radar by doing so. The IRS audited our two person retirement account as part of their demonstration project. The IRS was asking for things I never heard of, My CPA spent two days with the IRS and we were all clear with the exception of paying my CPA four grand.