Fiduciary Financial Advisor in Tampa, FL

You have probably worked for more than one company by now.

Each job left something behind. A 401(k) you stopped contributing to when you left. A second one you rolled into an IRA and never looked at again. The plan at your current job, where the money goes in automatically every two weeks. Add a brokerage account, the equity in your house, and cash that keeps building in checking because you have not decided what to do with it.

None of it is necessarily in bad shape. It just has never been looked at as one thing.

That is usually the question behind the search: is all of this pointed at the same retirement, and am I doing things in the right order? The first step is answering it.

A Plan Before the Paycheck Stops

You may already be saving a meaningful amount every year without knowing what that saving is buying you. A 401(k), an IRA and money going into a brokerage account are not the same thing as knowing when you can afford to stop working.

We start by putting a date on the question. Not the date you have to stop working, but the point when you want the choice to be yours. Then we work backward. What would you spend in that first year? What would Social Security eventually cover? How much would your savings need to be worth, and are you on pace to get there?

The answer changes other decisions. If you are ahead of pace, you may have room to pay down the mortgage, help a child with college, or save more in a taxable account you can reach before 59½. If you are behind, you want to know now, while a raise or a change in how you save can still close the gap.

Taxes are part of it too. Saving in the Roth side of a 401(k) costs more tax today and less later. Saving pre-tax does the reverse. The right mix depends on what your income looks like now compared with what it is likely to be in retirement, and it can change as your career changes. Our retirement planning page explains how the pieces fit.

Three Jobs, Three 401(k)s

You changed jobs. The paperwork asked what you wanted to do with your old 401(k), and you were busy starting somewhere new. So the account stayed where it was.

Then it happened again.

Now there may be a few old plans, each with its own website, its own login and its own list of funds you chose years ago. Some may hold Roth money. One may still be invested in a target-date fund picked for a retirement age that no longer fits you.

For each account, you can leave it where it is, move it into your current employer’s plan, roll it into an IRA, or take the cash. Taking the cash means income tax on the whole balance, and usually a 10 percent penalty before 59½, so it seldom makes sense for a meaningful amount. The other three are worth comparing account by account.

The deciding details are usually specific to the account. The investment choices and costs in your current plan may be better or worse than what an IRA would offer. Roth money should go to a Roth account, not a traditional one. And when you roll Roth 401(k) money into a Roth IRA, the years the money spent in the 401(k) do not count toward the Roth IRA’s five-year clock, which the IRS explains in its designated Roth account FAQs.

Old accounts also carry old decisions with them. The beneficiary form you completed when you started a job ten years ago may still be sitting there unchanged.

Sometimes the best answer is to leave an account alone. Sometimes it is to combine several into one. When money moves into an IRA we manage, our advisory fee applies to it, and we say so before you choose. Our 401(k) rollover guide walks through each option.

Investing Once the Plan Is Clear

When money sits in several places, it is easy to own the same thing four times without meaning to. Each account may look reasonable on its own. Together they can add up to more risk, more cost or more overlap than you intended.

We treat every account as part of one portfolio. The plan becomes a written investment policy statement: what the money is for, when you are likely to need it, how much risk the plan can carry, and how each account is taxed.

The portfolio is then built and managed to that policy, aiming for the best after-tax return for the risk the plan allows. Where each investment sits, in a pre-tax, Roth or taxable account, is part of that work. Our guide to asset location explains why the same investment can leave you with a different result after tax.

We start with what you own. If a fund in your current 401(k) is low in cost and does its job, it stays. At Holland Capital, investment management means carrying out the plan across all of your accounts, not just the ones we hold.

Working with Holland Capital

Holland Capital Management is an independent registered investment adviser and a fiduciary. M. Chad Holland, CFA, CFP® works directly with clients and is responsible for the planning and advice.

You do not need to organize everything before the first meeting. Start with the accounts you know you have. A recent statement from each one and the benefits information from your current employer give us enough to begin putting the pieces together.

From there, we tell you what we see, what we would do first, and what can wait.

If you already have a CPA or an attorney, they stay involved. We coordinate with them so your accounts, your tax return and your documents agree.

The first conversation is free. If there is work worth doing after that, we will define the scope and cost before you decide whether to move forward.

Our offices are in Charlotte, North Carolina and Winter Park, Florida. We work with clients in Tampa primarily by video or phone. When an in-person meeting makes sense, we meet by appointment at the Regus center at 4830 West Kennedy Boulevard in the Westshore business district.

For clients whose investments we manage, accounts are held directly at Charles Schwab in the client’s own name. Holland Capital manages the investments but does not take custody of client assets. If a client ever needs in-person assistance from Schwab, the closest branch is in Tampa at 4304 West Boy Scout Boulevard.

We work with clients throughout Florida. You can see the other Florida communities we serve here.

Our what we do page explains how a planning engagement works.

Frequently Asked Questions

Photo: Sonny SideUp / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 2.0, cropped.