401 K Rollover Rules
There is a reason why you don’t have direct control over the monies in your 401K plan. It’s because, technically, it’s not your plan.
Since the 401K plan is sponsored by your employee, you don’t actually own the assets in your 401K plan. The plan owns them. That’s why the 401 K rollover rules don’t permit you to directly rollover the the monies yourself. The only entity with the authorization to do that is the trustee who is the administrator of the plan. This accounts for the additional difficulty in accessing and rolling over monies in a 401K plan.
But, all in all, it’s simply another level of oversight or bureaucracy that you have to go through. For many people, the 401 k rollover is ideal because it allows you to transfer your existing retirement account into another retirement account without being subject to unnecessary taxes or withdrawal penalties.
