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kurtmiao
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kurtmiao asked about a year ago in Individual Retirement Account (IRA)

rollover to ira-cd plan

I have ira with Massmutual and intend to rollover to an ira-cd plan with Wochovia bank. Can I do it and how?

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Michael Kitces
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Kurtmiao,
You can certainly roll over your IRA from one provider to another. Congress has granted all of us a great deal of latitude in where we keep our IRAs and how we invest them.

Typically, an IRA rollover is accomplished by going to the new institution where you wish to have your new IRA (in your case, Wachovia) and requesting that they help you rollover your IRA. They will provide you paperwork to establish a new IRA account at Wachovia, and will also give you paperwork to complete what's called a "trustee to trustee transfer" of your IRA directly from the old company (MassMutual) to the new company (Wachovia). The money never enters your hands directly - which in this case, is a good thing, because there are additional time requirements that may apply if you take possession of the money yourself. Once Wachovia has all of the paperwork completed, they will process it to have the money from your MassMutual IRA rolled over to your Wachovia account. The process will typically take anywhere from about 2-4 weeks on average, depending on the financial institutions involved.

However, a few caveats to point out. First of all, clarify that there aren't any potential penalties or charges if you liquidate whatever is in your IRA with MassMutual. If you have an annuity, or certain share classes of mutual funds, there may be charges to close out your investments there; you might choose to do so anyway, but you should at least be aware of them. Second, make sure that an IRA CD fits within your overall portfolio needs. It's not clear from your question whether you had a similar fixed income investment with MassMutual or something else, but making changes like this can be a good time to review your overall portfolio as well.

I hope that helps a little!

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