Free primer: 401(k) rollover guide. Numbers: keep vs IRA vs cash-out. Paid steps assume you already know the five doors and you want the order of operations the week you resign — not another essay. Figures below are IRS rules and the calculator’s labeled defaults, not your plan and not today’s market.
Do this in order
Photograph the sources the day you give notice. Pre-tax deferrals, designated Roth, after-tax / mega-backdoor basis versus earnings, match, QDIA, outstanding loan, vested percent. The statement headline is not the amount that moves. Calculator defaults, labeled example: $185,000 at 80% vested and no loan is $148,000 you can move and $37,000 you forfeit. You cannot split what you cannot name.
Write the next cliff before you pick a last day. Your deferrals are always yours. Unvested match and profit-sharing stay with the employer. If a 100% cliff is days away and you can choose the last day, that date is the negotiation — HR will not volunteer it. Run the calculator on vested dollars only.
List the landmines that kill a “just roll it” reflex. Unpaid loan. Employer stock you might want as NUA (net unrealized appreciation, IRC §402(e)(4) — rolling those shares into an IRA throws the special tax away; get a pro before you touch the stock). Leaving in or after the year you turn 55, because the rule of 55 lives only in that plan. A plan that refuses partial distributions. A lawsuit: ERISA plans are not capped in bankruptcy the way contributory IRAs are. The federal IRA bankruptcy exemption for contributory amounts is $1,711,975 for cases filed April 1, 2025 through March 31, 2028; dollars rolled from an employer plan and kept traceable sit outside that cap. Outside bankruptcy, state law decides. If any landmine is yes, do not request a distribution this week. The rule-of-55 file is the other door.
Read the force-out notice before the 30 days die. SECURE 2.0 raised the statutory involuntary cash-out ceiling from $5,000 to $7,000 for distributions after December 31, 2023. The plan may use a lower number, or none — the document wins, not the statute’s ceiling. At or under $1,000 the plan may mail a check (20% withholding once the taxable amount is $200 or more). Between $1,000 and the plan’s limit, silence becomes an automatic IRA. The §402(f) notice must give you at least 30 days; you may waive it in writing. A surprise IRA is how a later backdoor Roth dies. Call before you “don’t get around to it.”
Call the new 401(k) before you touch the old one. “Do you accept incoming rollovers? Pre-tax, designated Roth, and after-tax? What is the account number, and how many days to open it?” Do not request the old distribution until that destination exists. A check with nowhere to land is how people miss 60 days.
If you still use the backdoor Roth, the new 401(k) wins even when the IRA fee is lower. Form 8606 pro-rata looks at every traditional, SEP, and SIMPLE IRA on December 31. A rollover IRA is that balance. Plan-to-IRA and plan-to-plan rollovers are not the one-rollover-per-year limit (IRS: that limit is IRA-to-IRA only, Announcement 2014-15 / IRC §408(d)(3)(B); trustee-to-trustee IRA transfers also do not count). The limit bites later, if you then take a 60-day IRA check. See the backdoor sequence. Do not “park it in an IRA for a month.”
Open an IRA only after the fee gap beats the pro-rata cost. Same labeled defaults: $148,000 vested, 7% return, 20 years, 22% tax at the end, all-in fees 0.85% old / 0.25% new plan / 0.10% IRA. After-tax spending power: keep $380,852, new 401(k) $426,299, IRA $438,440. The IRA is about $12,142 ahead of the new plan on fees alone — and the bars do not show pro-rata. If you still need a clean backdoor, take the new plan. If the IRA won and you accepted the dirty-IRA cost, open the broker, name the beneficiary, then request the old plan’s direct rollover. Share the hash from the calculator; do not retype the story in email.
The form language to insist on. Trustee-to-trustee. Payable to the new custodian FBO your name. No withholding. Pre-tax → traditional. Designated Roth → Roth (Form 1099-R code H when it lands in a Roth IRA, not code G). After-tax basis → Roth IRA and the earnings on that after-tax money → traditional, in the same distribution, when the plan will split it (Notice 2014-54). Do not endorse a check into checking “until the new account is pretty.”
If a check payable to you still arrives, replace the 20%. IRC §3405(c) withholds 20% of an eligible rollover distribution unless it was paid as a direct rollover. On the $148,000 example the check is $118,400 and $29,600 already went to the IRS. You have 60 days from the day you receive it (IRC §402(c)(3)) to deposit the gross $148,000, which means $29,600 from other cash. Deposit only the check and that $29,600 is taxable; under 59½ the 10% additional tax (IRC §72(t)) on that slice is $2,960. Direct rollovers skip both. This plan rollover does not use up your one IRA-to-IRA rollover for the year.
Loan offset is a different clock, and it is not inside the rollover check. A qualified plan loan offset — loan in good standing, offset because you separated or the plan terminated — may be rolled with other cash until your tax-return due date including extensions for the year of the offset (IRC §402(c)(3)(C); IRS plan loan offsets). Leave in 2026: April 15, 2027, or October 15, 2027 if you file Form 4868. An offset because you stopped paying is 60 days, not the long window. The plan often withholds nothing, because no cash was paid to you. You still owe ordinary income, plus 10% if you are under 59½ and no exception applies, unless you replace the offset from other cash. It does not ride along.
The week the money posts. New beneficiary forms the same week — the old plan’s form does not travel (beneficiaries). Pick an investment so it does not sit in the cash sweep. Put January on the calendar for Form 1099-R: code G on a pre-tax direct rollover (not taxable); code H on designated Roth to a Roth IRA. Conversions and after-tax basis need Form 8606. Converting the pre-tax $148,000 is a tax bill, not a rollover: at the default 24% that is $35,520 this year if you pay it from outside cash. A high W-2 year is usually the wrong year. Use the Roth conversion tool and the IRMAA lookback before you check the convert box because the IRA application made it easy.
Hard-stop list. Cashing out the same $148,000 at 24% plus 10% leaves $97,680 now. The calculator’s 20-year model of that leftover is about $271,921 versus $426,299 if it had gone to the new 401(k). Do not roll employer stock into an IRA the week someone says “NUA.” Do not open a traditional IRA to park a backdoor-Roth year. Do not waive the 30-day notice into a $7,000 automatic IRA you never look up. Do not skip the new job’s match to “simplify the old plan” — match first, then this file. Do not treat a code G 1099-R as a bill.
One-page decision
Keep if rule of 55, NUA, or a fund the IRA cannot beat, and the plan will not force you out. New 401(k) if it accepts the roll-in and you still want a clean backdoor Roth — on the labeled defaults it finishes about $45,447 ahead of keeping the 0.85% plan. IRA only when that ~$12,142 fee gap over 20 years is worth a December 31 pro-rata balance. Direct rollover, FBO the custodian, no withholding. Replace a 20% check within 60 days or do not take the check. QPLO loans get until the return due date, including extensions, and only if you bring other cash. Convert only in a year the $35,520-shaped tax bill is actually cheap. Cash out only after you have run the bars and still need the $97,680. Educational, not advice.