Katherine’s question: “What do I do with my retirement accounts?”

April: I had a friend come talk to me. Her name is Katherine, and she said I could share some of her story because she’s in a unique situation.

She’s working in Korea right now as a teacher. She came back to the U.S. for Christmas, and she actually went back to Korea today. Before she left, she said, “I want to talk with you about my retirement accounts.”

I’ve known Katherine since she was in college. We’d talk about finances, and she took some of my financial classes. She likes to pretend she’s irresponsible, but she’s really not.

Now her question is: What do I do with my money now that I actually have some?

She realized she has:

• Two traditional retirement accounts in the U.S. (one from a previous job that isn’t being contributed to anymore, and one where a teaching organization is contributing), and

• A Korean pension that’s been accumulating.

The Korean pension isn’t something she can do much with right now — it’ll likely just sit there until she returns to the U.S. But the bigger question was: What does she do with her other retirement accounts?

So I thought this was a good opportunity to talk about retirement — and what to do once you’re saving money and thinking about the future.

Step one: get stable before investing

Robert: Let’s back up a little first. We’ve talked a lot about:

• Getting out of debt

• Building an emergency fund

• Knowing where your money is going

• Having cash set aside for surprises

Once those basics are under control, then it’s time to start saving and investing.

Should you combine old retirement accounts?

Robert: A lot of people ask me: “If I have an old 401(k) or a 403(b) from a previous employer, do I need to combine it with what I have now?”

And my answer is: It depends.
I don’t know what you’re invested in inside that plan.

• If you’re in good funds that are performing well and your former employer isn’t forcing you to move it, you may want to do absolutely nothing.

• But if it’s not making money (or it’s stuck in a poor-performing option), you should consider moving it or adjusting it.

I talked to someone recently who worked only one year at a company. He didn’t put anything into the retirement plan — but the company contributed $7,000. He’s been gone a year and called me and said, “Mr. Robert, what do I do with this money?”

I said, “What money?”
He said, “The company put $7,000 in there. Now it’s worth $14,600.”

I told him: “If they don’t make you take it out… don’t touch it.”

April: Especially if it’s doubled — it’s clearly working.

Robert: Exactly. So sometimes you should combine accounts, and sometimes you shouldn’t.

If you want everything in one place for peace of mind, that’s fine — consolidate it and work with a good financial advisor. But if your old account is performing well, you may want to leave it and just keep building your current one.

Either way, monitor it. Even if you aren’t employed there anymore, you still have online access. You can still:

• See performance

• Adjust allocations

• Change which funds you’re in

The real key: choosing the right funds

April: That’s what Katherine and I were looking at. She had money sitting in a single mutual fund and didn’t really understand what it meant or what her other options were. When we pulled it up, she had lots of funds to choose from.

So the question became: Do we need to move the money out of the account — or just adjust what it’s invested in?

Robert: That’s exactly right. At minimum, look at it once a year. I prefer quarterly.

Some funds are tied closely to the economy. You can pay attention to what’s up, what’s down, and adjust accordingly.

Diversification: don’t assume you’re diversified

Robert: Let me say this clearly: Be careful with diversification.

A lot of people think, “If I pick four different funds, I’ve diversified.” Not always.

Here’s what you want to do: look inside the funds and check the top 10 holdings.

If Fund A, Fund B, Fund C, and Fund D all heavily invest in:

• Amazon

• Tesla

• Google (Alphabet)

• Microsoft

…then you didn’t really diversify. You just spread the same risk across different labels.

Risk tolerance matters

Robert: I’m 68 years old, and I still participate in a 401(k) with a company I work with. People say, “At your age, you shouldn’t take risks.”

But here’s the thing: I’m not planning to live off that specific fund when I retire — I started it about seven years ago, putting in a little every week. I chose one high-risk, high-tech fund.

I’ve watched it go up one year and crash the next. But over the last 10 years, that fund averaged about 20.3%.

April: That’s a really good return.

Robert: Sometimes you can learn a lot just by watching what’s happening around you — what people are buying, what’s growing, what’s changing.

Investing tip: pay attention to real life trends

Robert: I learned that early on when I studied a famous investor named Peter Lynch.

One of his biggest investments was a company called L’eggs — the pantyhose that used to come in little plastic eggs.

People asked him, “Why would you invest in pantyhose?”

He said, “My wife kept coming home with those eggs. She loved them. So I looked up the company and bought stock.”

Now, not everything lasts forever — trends change — but the point is: sometimes the clues are right in front of you.

April: And I’ve heard people talking about possibly bringing them back — so there you go. What goes around comes around.

Age impacts risk

April: One of the points I talked through with Katherine is that she’s 30. She can invest differently than someone who’s 70 or 80.

If you’re 30 and something drops, you have time to recover. If you’re 80 and it crashes, that’s a different story.

So I told her: don’t get too deep in the weeds. Decide your risk level and diversify based on risk.

Robert: Exactly. It’s like food and digestion.

I can eat spicy food at 3:00 a.m., go to bed, and sleep like a baby. Your mother can’t take one bite of a burrito late at night and sleep well.

That’s risk tolerance — and investing works the same way.

If your risk tolerance is low, don’t check your investments every day. And don’t panic when there’s a down year.

I had a fund go down 12% one year. Another guy panicked and wanted to sell. I asked him, “Do you think these companies are going out of business, or did they just have a bad year?”

Two years later, he thanked me — because it ended up going up over 30%.

Safe options (and a note about T-bills)

Robert: If you can’t handle ups and downs, you can keep money in a bank account. You won’t make much, but you’ll have peace of mind.

Right now, money market rates have been dropping. In my situation, they dropped to around the low 2% range.

So I started buying Treasury bills — like 3-month and 6-month T-bills — because they’ve been paying higher than my money market account.

And here are two things people may not realize:

• Bank accounts are FDIC-insured up to $250,000 per account

• T-bills are backed by the U.S. government, and you’re not dealing with the same $250k-per-account FDIC cap

• And T-bill interest generally doesn’t get taxed by the state

But we’ll go deeper on this later — today is more of a big-picture overview.

The real enemy is procrastination

Robert: The main thing I want to drive home is this:

Start.

Procrastination will kill your retirement.

People say:

• “Retirement is a long way off.”

• “I have too many expenses.”

• “I’ll get around to it sooner or later.”

But if you don’t start saving, it doesn’t matter where you invest — because you won’t have anything to invest.

Let me give a simple example.

Example: starting earlier changes everything

If you’re 36 and you save $4,000 a year for 20 years, you put in $80,000.

At a 10% average return (just using easy math from this example), at the end of those 20 years, you’d have about $252,000.

Now here’s the kicker: if you stop contributing at 55 and just let it grow until 65, it could grow to around $653,000.

Now compare that to starting later.

If you wait until you’re 46 and contribute the same $4,000 a year for 20 years, you still put in $80,000… but you end up around $252,000, not $653,000.

That’s why procrastination hurts — because time is your greatest advantage.

Start small, stay consistent

Robert: My dad used to take me down to the bank and have me put in $5 a week into a passbook savings account. He was teaching me a habit.

That’s the key: build the habit of saving.

Enjoy life, have fun — but don’t spend everything today and leave nothing for your future.

Some people have two boats. And you know what BOAT stands for, right?

April: Break Out Another Thousand.

Robert: And in 2026, it might mean break out another ten thousand.

April: Or just find a friend with a boat.

Robert: Exactly. If you save and invest and you end up with a strong nest egg later — go have a ball. But don’t buy things just because your neighbor has them.

Your neighbor is not you.

Focus on you and your family.

Compound interest is your best friend

April: This is all compounding over time.

Robert: Exactly. Compound interest is simple:

If you put in $1,000 and earn 10%, you have $1,100.
Next year, you earn 10% on $1,100 — not the original $1,000.
So it compounds and grows faster over time.

Don’t miss the employer match

April: And one more point — if your employer contributes a match, you don’t necessarily have to wait until all debt is paid off before you start investing.

If you can afford Starbucks, you can afford to put something into your 401(k).

If you’re spending $6 a day, five days a week… that’s $30 a week. Take one of those weeks and put $30 into your retirement. Your company will often match part of it.

That’s free money — and then your money and their money both compound over time.

Robert: That’s exactly right.

Preview for next episode

April: Next episode, we’ll go deeper into the basics:

• What a 401(k) means

• What a Roth is

• What mutual funds are

• How to think about allocations

We mentioned some of it today while answering Katherine’s question, but we’ll break it down more clearly.