Finance/Children

Hey Taylor - I just left my old company because it was forced to downsize. Fortunately, Taylor another Kovar opportunity came around at just the right time, but I’m wondering what to do with my 401(k). Do I leave it with my old employer or move it over to my new company’s plan? - Nena

Hey Nena - Happy to hear the job situation worked out! These are tough times for so many, and it’s nice to hear good news about people staying employed. 401(k)s are tricky, and your situation shines a light on some of the reasons why. I’m going to give a broader assessment of these accounts to help clarify my point, but I promise I’ll finish up by answering your question.

Problems with 401(k)s. As far as retirement accounts go, these are not my favorites. The main reasons are that there are too many fees and they’re limiting as far as what positions you can hold. You also need to make sure you’ve worked the requisite years to have 100% of matched funds vested, and if your company closes or files bankruptcy before that time, you might lose money by no fault of your own. Because of these factors, and all things being equal, I’d say an IRA is a better choice.

Benefit of the employee match. To contradict the above paragraph, if you have an employer matching up to 3 or 5% of your contribution and you have every intention of staying with that company long enough to become entirely vested, that’s a nice way to pad your retirement account. If you’re able to fund a 401(k) through pre-tax contributions and then still add money to an IRA, even better. It’s not free money because you have to stick around to earn it, but for those who do stick around, the payments are very real.

What to do when you leave. Finally, back to your question. There’s no good reason to leave your 401(k) at your old job, and there’s not a particularly good reason to roll it over to your new company. Even if you now have an employer you love with a matching program, you can still take that money while turning the old 401(k) into an IRA with better investment options. A 401 (k) is a great way to get your retirement funds started, but it’s far from the pinnacle of investing.

Whatever you choose, make sure to fund that retirement account as much as possible. Congrats on the new job and good luck!

Legal Disclaimer: Information presented is for educational purposes only and is not an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. Investments involve risk and, unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed. Be sure to first consult with a qualified financial adviser and/or tax professional before implementing any strategy discussed herein. To submit a question to be answered in this column, please send it via email to Question@GoFarWithKovar.com or via USPS to Taylor Kovar, 415 S 1st St, Suite 300, Lufkin, TX 75901.

FLATTEN THE CURVE! SHOP LOCAL

“There’s no onesize-fits-all model of childrearing for all the world’s parents,” opines Alma Gottlieb, John Professor Rosemond Emerita of Anthropology at the University of Illinois. Gottlieb was quoted in an online article reporting actress Kristen Bell’s revelation that her five-year-old daughter is “still in diapers.”

Yes, Professor Gottlieb, there is indeed one world-wide model of childrearing. In every culture, in every historical time, parents have adhered to the objective of passing along to their children the core values of the culture in question. American parents were striving to raise children who respected the liberty and personal responsibility of the individual, for example, and so on. Every culture was striving to strengthen and perpetuate itself.

Until recently, that is. In the USA at least, we are currently living in the age of cultural relativism, the apparent fantasy behind which is world peace and climate utopia. Cultural relativism begets parenting relativism which begets the notion that the raising of a child should be tailored to the “individual needs” of said child. A child’s individual needs, in the final analysis, are determined by parental attitudes. Thus, if Kristen Bell is too lazy to toilet train her child, she claims that her child’s unique nature is not conducive to being properly socialized.

Bell’s revelation met with lots of backlash, so I’ll add my own: It is an insult to the intelligence of a human being to allow said being to soil and wet herself past age thirty months, which is my most liberal limit. A dog can be trained to eliminate only in the back yard before six months, the human equivalent of which is between eighteen and thirty months. It is disgraceful to expect less of a human than one would expect of a dog. When the backlash began to circulate on the Internet, Bell revised her claim. Her daughter only wears diapers at night, she now says. Okay. I can accept that she simply misspoke initially; that her daughter uses the toilet during her waking hours (albeit the full context of Bell’s original remarks renders that somewhat dubious).

In which case, I have a bit of advice for Bell: If you want your daughter to stop wetting the bed, do not put diapers on her at bedtime. The feel of bulky fabric around the pelvic area is associated with spontaneous release. Diapers and pull-ups at night extend bedwetting indefinitely.

To achieve night dryness, a child must wet the bed, not a diaper. She must experience the sensation of wetness, which modern diapers inhibit. If she does not, she will continue to wet. Put the child to bed with one or two fluffy towels underneath her. Teach her to take care of herself when she wets, as in, “You do not need to wake us up. Here are more towels. Use them if you must.”

If that doesn’t do the trick within a month (and yes, it’s an inconvenient month), then purchase a bedwetting alarm (padand-bell, not pull-up-and-bell) and do the work required to get the child to wake up when it signals urination. Specifically, because bedwetters, generally, sleep very deeply, one must wake the child when the alarm sounds until she begins to hear it on her own.

Expect two to six weeks of night training and then years of nighttime bliss. Family psychologist John Rosemond: johnrosemond.com, parentguru.com.

John Rosemond has worked with families, children, and parents since 1971 in the field of family psychology. In 1971, John earned his masters in psychology from Western Illinois University and was elected to the Phi Kappa Phi National Honor Society.