Consolidating IRAs

Reminder:

Some physician-investors may findthemselves up to their eyeballs in paperworkgenerated by several IRAs, oftenrollovers from the 401(k) plans of formeremployers. Consolidating them into oneIRA can pay dividends in several ways,and not only by cutting back on thepaperwork blizzard. For one thing, assetsin a single IRA are a lot easier to keeptrack of and to allocate according to yourinvestment goals. If you closean IRA, you have 60 days to reinvest thecash in another IRA; miss the deadlineand the IRS will hit you with income taxesand penalties. A better way is to ask theIRA administrators to transfer the fundsdirectly to the IRA you're keeping open.