401K to traditional IRA or rollover traditional IRA?...

[Bill1207]

Hi,
I can't seem to get a straight answer from the websites I've looked at, so I thought I would ask the experts here...

Here's my background...

1) I am recently, fully retired. While I may pick up a part time job at some point, I have no plans to contribute to a 401K moving forward.
2) I am 66 and I don't plan on taking RMDs until I have to when I am 73.
3) At Vanguard, I have a traditional IRA, a rollover traditional IRA (with a zero balance that I set up years ago) and a Roth IRA.
4) I've decided not to do anything like Roth conversions, backdoor Roth's, etc.
5) I currently have an existing, traditional, tax deferred 401K at my previous employer that I want to move to Vanguard.

Question....

1) I have the option of moving the 401K to the traditional IRA or the traditional, rollover IRA. There seems to be, maybe, a strategy of moving the funds to the rollover traditional IRA so the 401K funds are not "comingled" with personal contributions. That doesn't exactly make sense to me as whether or not they are comingled, I will have to take an RMD from both the traditional and rollover IRAs when I reach 73. I must be missing something. Can you help me?

Many thanks!

[retired@50]

1) I am recently, fully retired. While I may pick up a part time job at some point, I have no plans to contribute to a 401K moving forward.

Can you help me?

Many thanks!

Since you don't intend to ever contribute to a 401k again, it doesn't matter much for someone in your position. The easiest thing to do would be to add it to the existing T-IRA (that has a balance). Having a single account, with a single balance to track will make RMD calculations that much simpler when the time comes.

The reason that a younger person would use a Rollover IRA would be to illustrate to a future employer that the money inside the account was indeed from payroll deductions from the previous job. The provenance of the funds inside the Rollover IRA account can matter to a future 401k administrator (if they were asked to accept a "roll-in") since they don't want deductible, and non-deductible balances being merged into a 401k plan.

Regards,

[Bill1207]

Thank you! That's what I thought.