[vikingerik]

Moving it around wouldn't mess it up. You can move a 401k from a previous employer to a Rollover IRA at any major custodian. This is not a taxable event (you just move pre-tax money to pre-tax money), so it doesn't matter if you sell whatever it's holding and buy the equivalent at a new custodian. The only reason to need to keep a 401k where it is is if that custodian has some unique investment option that you want there that you can't get elsewhere, but that's pretty rare.

[schemescape]

Note that IRA protections vary from state to state: https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/090915/can-my-ira-b...

[xeromal]

I ran into that with one of my old companies where they had a simple IRA and I had a hard time finding that placement investment company for that

[ASinclair]

Another reason to keep the funds in a 401(k) is to allow you to keep using the Backdoor Roth IRA without worrying about the Pro-rata Rule.

[ptero]

You should be able to transfer a rollover IRA to your latest employer's 401k (and I think a regular, non-Roth, non-rollover IRA as well). One could probably enjoy unrestricted security choice of the traditional brokerage, then move funds back to the 401k before doing a backdoor Roth.

That said, I would talk to a financial advisor before moving large sums of money between account types. My 2c.

[throwaway280382]

Well, the mess up is not from the system. It is from my own mistakes :)