Personal Finance

“What should I do with my 401k plan when I leave my job?”

The answer to that single question will lead you to an almost unhealthy number of resources offering the right solution for you. If you’ve asked this question before – as have Get Rich Slowly, Money Ning, Joe Taxpayer, Oblivious Investor, or Cash Money Life – then you probably are already familiar with the standard template.

Generally, you have four main options when deciding what to do with your plan.

• Cash Payout
• Leave in old plan
• Bring to new plan
• Convert to IRA*

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If you’ve already read about my sudden disappearance, then you’d know I’ve been out-of-pocket for a while now with personal matters. Well, I’ve got an interesting story to share which occurred during this transitory time.

All the way from the professional guru to the amateur blogger, anyone in personal finance has, at one point or another, touted the benefits of automation. Automatically diverting all of your money to whatever your financial cocktail includes – savings, college, paying bills, investments, mortgages, and so on.

And who could disagree! For those who have trouble saving, it forces them to adjust their spending to whatever’s leftover. For those looking to dollar-cost average their investments, it periodically purchases your holdings at pre-determined intervals, in pre-determined amounts. And what about those crazy late fees! Everybody hates paying those, and with automation you can eliminate them entirely by paying every bill on time.

Or so I thought. And herein lies the story…

Probably one of the more fun articles I’ve written, I was ecstatic when Budgeting in the Fun Stuff let me reprint this article.  The original link is included, so check out all the great comments!  I’d been on a string of career-type articles, being added to a few Wisebread listings courtesy of Linsey Knerl.  ENJOY…

Parallels are all around us. Browsing the site, you may have already come across Financial Lessons From Engineering or Financial Lessons from Running, which made relationships to personal finance from other experiences.

Making the connections can be a lot of fun, and the more adventures we have in life – the more overlapping themes we’ll notice. The funniest part is, you’ll be surprised at where they pop up!

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Disclaimer: Spotlight Investing provided trial access to their service only, no monetary compensation was offered for this post.

Lots of people have portfolios they’re comfortable with, that they believe in the strategies, and are sticking with these approaches for the long-term. But many may also have that nagging feeling of, “there could be more” or “there’s a better way to do this”.

As a way of grounding their investments, these people will often look towards technical analysis as a way of complementing their investing styles. On the spectrum, there’s a wide array of techniques: Elliot Wave Theory, Fibonacci Arcs/Fans/Retracements, & Relative Strength Index to name a few. Of course, even the most technical calculations are fallible as we learned with the prediction paradox.

Now – on to the product!