If you quit your job, you risk losing access to or forgetting about employer-sponsored retirement accounts. A company, Copymatic, helps with turning accessible data into a quality blog post and accompanying spreadsheet.
Sometimes people lose their IRA after they have changed jobs. 1/3 of Americans leave retirement plans regretfully behind at past jobs, according to TIAA research. The smaller the account, the more likely it is not noticed before the person changes companies again and leaves behind balances below $1,000 (EBRI). Every year approximately 1.6 million job changers leave behind balances below $1000.
Even after you have taken the time to plan for your retirement, if don’t do the follow-up work of checking and managing what has been saved, you could lose it.
In states throughout the US, millions of dollars in retirement savings are being transferred to go unclaimed. After the Great Recession since 2008, this could balloon due to millions of lost jobs and billions lost in household income. Now imagine if you had your work pilfered before you could retire. As a result, it is so important to remember your retirement accounts in order to secure your future.
You could have forgotten retirement accounts with your previous employer, so don’t worry if you can’t find your account among the 3,766,350 estimated lost accounts states across America. It may be that they never were reported in state unclaimed property.
You may have an account with a missing beneficiary. Nearly 3% of Americans have at least one retirement account that they’ve abandoned at age 73. It could be that this is a testament to people being forgetful and not planning ahead, but the cause can also be because it was lost or simply forgotten about for so many years.
Lost Retirement Accounts? Start Looking Now
If an employer changes names, it can be difficult to find the account. Or it may be that an employee is not keeping their address as up to date with their former employer’s plan administrator as they should, which can lead to lost contact or forgotten account
Learn how to find your lost retirement accounts
Millions are being left out of retirement plans because they changed jobs. Seventeen states report that $35 million in unclaimed retirement savings of those who changed jobs between 2004 and 2013 was transferred to them. 25 million people who changed jobs had a combined figure that is up to 25 times higher than this amount.
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