Why would you not want to rollover a previous employer's 401(k) when changing jobs?
"The biggest reason why one might want to leave 401k money invested in an ex-employer's plan is that the plan offers some superior investment opportunities that are not available elsewhere, e.g. some mutual funds that are not open to individual investors such as S&P index funds for institutional investors (these have expense ratios even smaller than the already low expense ratios of good S&P index funds) or ""hot"" funds that are (usually temporarily) closed to new investors, etc. The biggest reason to roll over 401k money from an ex-employer's plan to the 401k plan of a new employer is essentially the same: the new employer's plan offers superior investment opportunities that are not available elsewhere. Of course, the new employer's  401k plan must accept such roll overs. I do not believe that it is a requirement that a 401k plan must accept rollovers, but rather an option that a plan can be set up to allow  for or not.  Another reason to roll over 401k money from one plan to another  (rather than into an IRA) is to keep it safe from creditors. If you are  sued and found liable for damages in a court proceeding, the plaintiff can come after IRA assets but not after 401k money.  Also, you can take a loan from the 401k money (subject to various rules about how much can be borrowed, payment requirements etc) which you cannot from an IRA. That being said, the benefits of keeping 401k money as 401k money must be weighed against the usually higher administrative costs and usually poorer and more limited choices of investment opportunities  available in most 401k plans as Muro has said already." I've changed jobs several times and I chose to rollover my 401k from the previous employer into an IRA instead of the new employer's 401k plan.  The biggest reason not to rollover the 401k into the new employer's 401k plan was due to the limited investments offered by 401k plans.  I found it better to roll the 401k into an IRA where I can invest in any stock or fund. Another minor reason not to rollover would be to avoid the pro-rata taxes when doing a backdoor Roth IRA contribution.
You might want to bring this fancy new IRS rule to your employer's attention.  If your employer sets it up, an After-Tax 401(k) Plan allows employees to contribute after-tax money above the $18k/year limit into a special 401(k) that allows deferral of tax on all earnings until withdrawal in retirement. Now, if you think about it, that's not all that special on its own.  Since you've already paid tax on the contribution, you could imitate the above plan all by yourself by simply investing in things that generate no income until the day you sell them and then just waiting to sell them until retirement.  So basically you're locking up money until retirement and getting zero benefit. But here's the cool part:  the new IRS rule says you can roll over these contributions into a Roth 401(k) or Roth IRA with no extra taxes or penalties!  And a Roth plan is much better, because you don't have to pay tax ever on the earnings.  So you can contribute to this After-Tax plan and then immediately roll over into a Roth plan and start earning tax-free forever. Now, the article I linked above gets some important things slightly wrong.  It seems to suggest that your company is not allowed to create a brand new 401(k) bucket for these special After-Tax contributions.  And that means that you would have to mingle pre-tax and post-tax dollars in your existing Traditional 401(k), which would just completely destroy the usefulness of the rollover to Roth.  That would make this whole thing worthless. However, I know from personal experience that this is not true.  Your company can most definitely set up a separate After-Tax plan to receive all of these new contributions.  Then there's no mingling of pre-tax and post-tax dollars, and you can do the rollover to Roth with the click of a button, no taxes or penalties owed. Now, this new plan still sits under the overall umbrella of your company's total retirement plan offerings.  So the total amount of money that you can put into a Traditional 401(k), a Roth 401(k), and this new After-Tax 401(k) -- both your personal contributions and your company's match (if any) -- is still limited to $53k per year and still must satisfy all the non-discrimination rules for HCEs, etc. So it's not trivial to set up, and your company will almost certainly not be able to go all the way to $53k, but they could get a lot closer than they currently do. The rev rec rule allows companies to fully restate transition years, but doesn't actually require it. It allows them to just do a one time adjustment to retained earning instead, which is what most companies are doing/will do.  Lots of huge companies have adopted earlier than they had to, so they clearly saw some benefit in doing so. I think some are absolutely considering the benefits of a superficial bump in the transition year.   Obviously not a huge shift in long term earnings though. There is no segregation of amounts that you have in Rollover (Traditional) IRAs when it comes to figuring out how much of your basis is being converted from  your Traditional IRA into a Roth IRA.   So, yes, you will lose the benefit of being able to make nondeductible contributions to your Traditional IRA each year and rolling them over into a Roth IRA without tax consequences. Since your  401k amount may be  substantially more than the $5K basis you create each year, converting the 401k amount into a Traditional IRA will mean that most of the money converted to the Roth IRA is pre-tax money, and so you end up paying tax on most of the converted amount. There are a few things to consider. The answers others gave here are correct, but I'll offer some reasons you may not want to roll to an IRA: Why would you want to withdraw only the company match, and presumably leave your personal contributions sitting in your ex-company's 401k plan? Generally, 401k plans have larger annual expenses and provide for poorer investment choices than are available to you if you roll over your 401k investments into an IRA. So, unless you have specific reasons for wanting to continue to leave your money in the 401k plan (e.g. you have access to investments that are not available to nonparticipants and you think those investments are where you want your money to be), roll over part (or all) of your 401k assets into an IRA, and withdraw the rest for personal expenses.  If your personal contributions are in a Roth 401k, roll them over to a Roth IRA, but, as I remember it, company contributions are not part of the Roth 401k and must be rolled over into a Traditional IRA. Perhaps this is why you want to take those in cash to pay for your personal purchase? Also, what is this 30% hit you are talking about? You will owe income tax on the money withdrawn from the 401k (and custodians traditionally withhold 20% and send it to the IRS on your behalf) plus penalty for early withdrawal (which the custodian may also withhold if you ask them), but the tax that you will pay on the money withdrawn will depend on your tax bracket, which may be lower if you are laid off and do not immediately take on a new job. That is, the 30% hit may be on the cash flow, but you may get some of it back as a refund when you file your income tax return. I tried to roll my funds to my new company. But my hr department from my old job would not work with me on getting it straightened out. So I decided to either pull it all out or roll it into a 401 k and use it as a trial for stocks and investments. Simce it isn't a large amount of money to begin with The simplest way to consolidate the funds your old 401(k) plans is by doing what's called a Direct Rollover (whereby the funds go directly into the new plan and skips you completely) from each of the old plans into either an IRA that you establish with a provider of your choice or even into your current employer's 401(k) plan if that is available. That way, the funds are in one central account and available to invest. Plus it eliminates the mandatory 20% withholding if the rollover is indirect and is sent to you first before the deposit into the new plan. It is important to bear in mind that you have 60 calendar days from the date of distribution to get the full amount into the new plan and a rollover is considered a tax reportable, but not necessarily a taxable event provided you deposit the funds within the time frame allotted. Adding to justkt's answer. The big difference to you during the rollover is that moving the money to a Roth IRA, unless it was a Roth 401K, is going to require you pay a lot of taxes on the money you move. I'd suggest not doing that without guidance from a financial advisor. When you pick a company for your IRA, they should have information about rolling over funds from another IRA or a 401K. They will be able to walk you through the process. There shouldn't be a fee for doing this. They want your money to be invested in their funds. Once your money is in their hands they are able to generate their profits.  You will want to do a direct transfer. Some employers will work with the investment companies and send the funds directly to the IRA. Others will insist on sending a check to you. The company that will have your IRA should give you exact specifications for the check so that you won't have to cash it. The check will be payable to you or the IRA account. The IRA company will have all the details. Decide if you will be converting non-Roth to Roth, before doing the rollover. "A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, Rollover IRAs were used for funds that came from (were rolled over from) a 401(k) account or a 403(b) account. All that money (including any earnings in the interim) could be rolled over into a 401(k) plan with a new employer etc.  One could make a regular contribution to a Rollover IRA but once such a commingling of money occurred, none of the money in the Rollover IRA could be rolled over into a 401(k) account etc. In those good old days when contributions to IRAs were made by paper check and ""deposit slip"", one had to write a letter to the Rollover IRA custodian certifying that the IRA owner understood that the contribution would destroy forever the possibility of rolling over the money into another 401(k) etc. All this went by the wayside a few years ago when the law changed and the distinction between Rollover IRAs and ordinary Traditional IRAs was eliminated. Commingling of IRA contributions and Rollover money from 401(k)s are permitted, and the entire IRA balance could be rolled over into a new 401(k) plan (provided the new plan accepted rollovers). However the adjectives still persist; like chili555, I too have IRAs that are still called Rollover IRA, they all have commingled funds, and if the law ever changes back, none of those IRA accounts would be eligible for rolling over into a new 401(k)." If you really want to use the money roll it over to the new companies 401k and then take a 401k loan out for whatever the expense is.  (Assuming the retirement plan allows them.) Generally 401k loans are frowned upon for all sorts of reasons however if the alternative is to just flat out withdraw the money it is a slightly better solution. This is at the bottom of my list of concerns, as both an employee and an employee.  When hiring, its because I have work that needs to be done.  I want to get someone in as quickly as possible, so I really don't care about holidays.  Holiday pay also doesn't come out of my budget, so that doesn't enter in the decision. As a employee, if I'm unemployed I want to start as soon as possible.  If switching jobs, I'm going to get paid for the holiday at one job or another, so it really doesn't matter.  The last time I changed employers, I started the second week of January.  That was more driven by moving concerns than anything else. You should never roll a 401(k) to a Roth IRA. If the intention is to do so, you are better off rolling to a traditional IRA, and then converting. (Per the comment below, I should add - if the 401(k) contained post tax money, this portion rolls to a Roth, not a Tradition IRA. You then have the exercise of converting/recharacterizing just the TIRA money, as the Roth stands aside) This preserves the ability to recharacterize back to a traditional IRA. You might wish to do this if: The answers so far are great, but I'll add what I see missing - Once upon a time, money rolled over from a 401k or 403b plan into an IRA could not be rolled into another 401k or 403b unless the IRA account was properly titled as a Rollover IRA (instead of Traditional IRA - Roth IRAs were still in the future) and the money kept separate (not commingled) with contributions to Traditional IRAs. Much of that has fallen by the way side as the rules have become more relaxed.  Also the desire to roll over  money into a 401k plan at one's new job has decreased too --  far too many employer-sponsored retirement plans have large management fees and the investments are rarely the best available: one can generally do better  keeping ex-401k money outside a new 401k, though of course new  contributions from salary earned at the new employer perforce must be put into the employer's 401k. While consolidating one's IRA accounts at one brokerage or one fund family certainly saves on the paperwork, it is worth keeping in mind that putting all one's eggs in one basket might not be the best idea, especially for those concerned that an employee might, like Matilda, take me money and run Venezuela. Another issue is that while one may have diversified investments at the brokerage or fund family, the entire IRA must have the same set of beneficiaries: one cannot leave the money invested in GM stock (or Fund A) to one person and the money invested in Ford stock (or Fund B) to  another if one so desires.  Thinking far ahead into the future, if one is interested in making charitable bequests, it is the best strategy tax-wise to make these bequests from tax-deferred monies rather than from post-tax money. Since IRAs pass outside the will, one can keep separate IRA accounts with different companies, with, say, the Vanguard IRA having primary beneficiary United Way and the Fidelity IRA having primary beneficiary the American Cancer Society, etc. to achieve the appropriate charitable bequests. Tax Refund: The US generally does not refund tax like other countries. For larger sales, you might want to try state tax refunds, check here: https://help.cbp.gov/app/answers/detail/a_id/373/~/how-to-obtain-a-refund-of-sales-tax-paid-while-visiting-the-united-states US Customs: You never pay US customs when you leave, they don't care about what you take out of the country. You might have to pay customs in your arrival country afterwards, and the rules depend on the country you arrive in. Most countries have a limit on how much you can bring for free, typically in the range of 500 $, but that varies a lot. Also, some countries do not count used articles, so if you wear your new clothing once, it does not count against the limit anymore.