I am jack and I am new to the ERC

[jackanderson]

Greetings,

I was trying to learn more about 403B options and stumbled across this site. I am a teacher in Pennsylvania. I am 58 years old and I am planning to retire at the end of this or next year. I was able to purchase 5 years of out of state credit ,3 from NY and 2 from WA. This gives me 25 years total at this point. My wife is also a teacher she has 33.4 years of service in PA and is 55 years of age. Unfortunately she has been fighting cancer and will need to retire soon. We are seeking advice to roll over options that might be available to us. I rolled over my retirement benefits from WA to avoid a 20% penalty. I elected to go with Kades Magolis to deposit some 9,900 dollars from my pension into a tax sheltered Investment Plan. The KM fees seem to be very high and I have been hearing of other teachers in other districts in Pa that are going with Vanguard or other options that have lower fees.. I am not sure if my district has Vanguard as an option on their list. I am seeking any advice from teachers in Pa that have rolled over monies into Vanguard or other lower fee options.

Thanks

 

[braumeister]

Welcome to the board.
Did you find this thread?
http://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f30/best-403b-provider-63611.html

 

[obgyn65]

Welcome to the board, Jack.

 

[travelover]

Once you retire, you can roll over the 403(b)s anywhere. Vanguard, Fidelity or T Rowe Price are good choices.

 

[jackanderson]

Thanks for your response. This is the thread that led me to this site. My wife and I have much to learn about 403B options.. I am glad that I am now posted on this site and can learn from others going through the retirement prep.

 

[Midpack]

Welcome to the fold, it's a great forum with great members all in all...

 

[Golf cruiser]

403B's are the equivalent of 401K's in the private sector. When you retire you should roll that money out of where you have it, and roll it into an IRA account that is self directed. Vanguard has the lowest management fees and are good about investor information. You should be able to set up your account on line and send The new custodian your statements and than the accounts are transferred into your new account. It is important not to liquidate it and get a check as it may be treated as a distribution...it must go directly from custodian to custodian. A general rule for a portfolio asset allocation is 100 minus your age is the percentage for stocks. The rest in bonds, and other fixed income investments. If you are more conservative you can increase the fixed income portion percentage. Another option is a targeted by age mutual fund which automatically rebalances your portfolio each year for you.

 

[jackanderson]

Thanks Golf Cruiser. I will check out Vanguard's website. I wonder how hard it will be to transfer the monies that I put into a TSA that Kades Margolis is handling for me into a Vanguard TSA? I just started it 3 months ago with retirement monies I had coming from Washington State. It came to about 9,900 dollars and I am putting 100.00 each pay into the Kades Margolis TSA. So far the handling fees are over 575.00 dollars.. It might be better to keep this in place for now. I imagine that there will be a penalty if I take the money out from Kades Margolis and transfer it into Vanguard. I plan to retire next year so this gives me some time to get my ducks in a row when I roll over the lump sum from Penna.

 

[Golf cruiser]

Jack, You may want to check Vanguards web site to see if they have the acct. documents for a 403b and if your employer will allow you to use an outside vender like Vanguard. If not you will have to wait until you retire and set up a standard IRA acct. You just need to provide a current statement to Vanguard after you set up the acct. Vanguard will instruct the custodian of your 403B to transfer he assets. You may need to liquidate the securities to cash if they are in some funky funds that Vanguard does not hold..they want you to buy Vanguard funds to help offset the costs of maintenance and statements, but they are not going to charge you outrageous handling fees..

 

[Badger]

You may want to check and see if this is possible for you.
In my wife's school system there were 20+ places to invest in a 403b with all but 1 being insurance annuities. The exception was Merrill Lynch (that I do not recommend). No other options were allowed. However, what I did was to have her 403b money put into a money market account with ML and then every so often I would fill out the proper paperwork with the help of TRPrice and have the money rolled into one of their mutual funds leaving a little in ML to keep the account open. Although ML frequently screwed up things they were eventually straightened out. They were a terrible company to work with but the only option that had a money market account so she wouldn't get her money tied up into a costly annuity. Once retired the remainder was rolled into TRP. That's how we overcame the rediculous 403b investment options for 10 years. Worked for me.

Cheers!