Sometimes it makes sense to leave your holdings in your previous employer’s retirement plan. Two examples would be: if your former employer’s plan offers attractive or well-priced (or both) investment selections or if, for some reason, management fees are waived within your former employer’s plan. Plan providers are required to disclose their account fee structure, so take a look at your retirement plan statements, or go online to find plan details. You can find out how much you are being charged at the investment level, called “expense ratio” and at the account level also known as “management fees.”

If the fees in your former employer’s plan are more expensive than the fees you can find in an IRA, it might be wise to consider a rollover. Further, if you have several 401(k) accounts at prior employers, it might make sense to consolidate all of them into a single IRA. A consolidated account could make it easier to manage your retirement assets.

There are plenty of low cost or free IRA account options with low minimums available. Many of them offer very competitively priced index funds as well as actively managed funds, balanced portfolios or target-date portfolios.