Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Job Transition Process : 401K and Insurance

Friday is my last day at my current job. Monday I'll start my new work from home job.

With the transition I need to make sure to take care of a couple of important things, namely my 401K and insurance.

UPDATE : Both sections have been updated with their respective resolutions

401K


At my current job I have $1,194.76 worth of funds in my 401K. That isn't enough for them to keep me in it. Sadly I've put in $1312.52 so far and haven't had it open long enough for the company match to have vested yet.

I need to decide if I'm going to roll it to a traditional IRA or a Roth IRA. Once I know which type I want I'm going to need to choose a company to get it through. That'll be a something to research today. The only thing I know right now is that I don't want to cash it out.

I believe that I have 30 days to get it rolled over.

UPDATE : It turns out that I will be able to keep my 401K right where it's at. I won't be able to make any more deposits though, so I'll still need to open an IRA of some sort for my new job.

Insurance


I should've asked more questions at both jobs. I'm not sure if my current insurance will disappear on Friday when I leave work, or if it'll continue through the month. I would assume that it would stop the moment I stop working for the company.

I won't be filling out the insurance paperwork at my new job till Monday, which means I might need to pick up some basic insurance for a weekend. If that's the case I'll try to find something with a super high deductible, just in case of an emergency.

I would just risk for the two days except that :

1) In 2006 my wife had been without insurance for a week or so. The same day her new insurance started we were in an accident and she broke her toe.

2) My wife is taking a ~500 mile (round trip) car trip this weekend to go to a cousin's wedding and I'm going camping. Both of those activities have a higher than normal chance of accidents occurring.

UPDATE : The insurance here is monthly, so I've got old-work insurance till the last day of July, so that's good. On the down side, I found out that new-work insurance coverage doesn't start until September first.

I looked into the COBRA plan as suggested by chackoc in the comments. COBRA for the four of us was going to be $900+ for the month of August.

We found and bought a one month policy with Assurant Health. My wife used them once before for a few months between coverage and found them easy enough to work with. We got a 100/0 % plan with a $1000 deductible for $220.64 including the $20 setup fee.

That'll cover us if something big happens and we'll be able to handle paying $1000 with our savings if something small happens.

2 comments:

chackoc said...

Have you looked into COBRA? There's a good chance it will cover you during the gap. I don't know all the details but my basic impression is that you'll have it unless you worked for a very small company.

http://www.dol.gov/ebsa/faqs/faq_consumer_cobra.HTMl

Rich said...

Thanks for the suggestion chackoc, I looked into it and found it to be a bit more than we wanted to pay just for coverage. I've updated the post with what we decided to do.