Why? What’s there to report? 
If it is a 401(k), and you have not yet retired, the money can just sit there and continue to be invested/grow on autopilot. My husband would not check his 401(k) accounts unless I specifically ask him. Which I do periodically.
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Not necessarily 401k, but IRA’s for instance. My accountant every year asks for the ending balance in our IRAs and it’s on their tax organizer. I know it doesn’t go on my tax return but if there are distributions or contributions they want to know that too. 401k plans should also regularly be looked at by the administrator for unusual activity, as I am the administrator of one and I get all of that information.
I came across a small IRA in my credit union that I had forgotten. It’s $4,500. Dh is retiring next month. We are both 58. Should I roll this into a Roth? I don’t have a Roth, though dh does. I know it’s not a lot of money, but I’m curious whether there is an obvious answer to those of you with more experience. TIA
My husband has an IRA and only checks it because he trades stocks in it. Before he started doing this, the account was on autopilot.
I bet your situation is not a very typical of an average American citizen with retirement accounts… most of us don’t have an accountant.
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I have kept an inventory of our accounts and tried to consolidate what makes sense. Before you decide what to do with the found IRA, take a look at what all regular and retirement accounts you and your spouse have.
Whether it makes sense to convert a traditional IRA into a Roth IRA depends on your current tax rate and anticipated future tax rate when you are say 72 years old. If it’s higher now than it is likely to be then, converting it is less compelling because you will pay taxes now to convert.
There’s other things to consider as well. I get a lot of good info from bogleheads.org. One thing I definitely did was try to consolidate multiple smaller retirement accounts into fewer larger ones. I rolled my traditional IRAs into my deferred comp 403 plan if it was pre tax funds. If it was post tax funds (because our income was too high), I rolled those over into my Roth IRA (a strategy known as back door Roth IRA).
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Depends on your incremental tax bracket. What will it be for this year? What is it likely to be next year after your H retires?
If you will be in a lower bracket next year, it would probably make sense to wait.
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Do you not get those quarterly statements? Before I did everything online, every quarter they would come in the mail. Some still do, since switching to paperless statements seems to be too much of a PITA for me. But the ones that are paperless, I still get texts and emails that the statements are ready. And for my dinky IRA (even less than @Youdon_tsay 's), I still get a form at the end of the year to put in my tax folder.
I check mine every month on payday when I update my master list. It’s easy now that everything is digital. But before that, I would open the paper statements and look. I would keep at least one statement/year in my files for someone to see in case something happened to me.
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That’s how I knew I had this … i swear this is the first year I ever got a tax document on it.
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I think many years it comes after I’ve filed (mid-end of February). So it’s a bit of a pain to get it in the right file folder (lazy!)
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Interestingly, it was much safer when the card could be just an ATM card. Now the only choices was a debit/Visa/MC. These have weaker protections than ATM cards. I have had a couple of cases of skimmers taking money out of the cash accounts. Was paid back eventually by the bank. So I limit the cash in that account to a few thousand.
I’ve had more instances of credit card fraud, but those were easily caught, in part because the credit card companies have fraud-checking software and in part because my executive assistant reviews the bill before paying it. I review it periodically.
Our FA has software that aggregates all of our accounts into one place. I should check that more frequently, which would enable me to detect fraud more easily, but I don’t really want to spend time getting caught up in market fluctuations. It is helpful to see that we are reaching our retirement goals even if we don’t intend to retire.
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What I have found is that banks will still issue ATM-only cards (without Visa/MC capability), but that is the non-default option that you have to specifically ask for (instead of an ATM card that also has Visa/MC capability that offers another (and greater) vulnerability to fraud).
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I remember when I set up a new bank account after I got married at a local bank where we were living, I filled out all of the paperwork that they presented. As I was about to leave, I asked how long until I received my ATM card. She acted surprised and said “Oh, you want one of those.” I told her yes and once I got it they would never see me again. They didn’t have any ATMs of their own so they didn’t charge you a fee to use anyone else’s. And back at that point, banks didn’t charge fees to non-customers to use their ATMs. So people would ask me what bank was mine when we were looking for ATMs and I would say all of them.
Now that doesn’t happen but current bank doesn’t charge me to use another bank’s ATMs and reimburses me for fees charged by those other banks. So I am back to every bank being my bank which is convenient.
I agree its tough to find simple ATM cards today. I don’t have one but I only use debit cards at ATMs. Was a time when I used debit card for everything but ran into a fraud problem. Credit cards are more forgiving of fraud issues.
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I’ve had an ATM card from Wells Fargo( originally Wachovia) for years. The problem is it is not accepted at a some places, you need a card with a cc logo. I end up using a cc at this locations.
My balances in some of my retirement accounts are high enough that a $20k drop in balance wouldn’t necessarily arouse suspicion , especially if the market has been turbulent. I’d have to go look at the transactions… which I never do.
I wonder if I can set an alert to send me a text or email whenever there’s a withdrawal or transfer out of the account. 
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You should be able to lock your retirement accounts to prevent any withdrawal or transfer. It’s very worth it for peace of mind.
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It sounds like a good idea to lock retirement accounts to prevent fraud. But… how does it work when you actually do want to withdraw or transfer yourself?
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I have mine in Fidelity. It’s a multiple factor identification process online to turn on and off the lock. I have it on another account that I have had to turn it on and off and it hasn’t been too complicated.
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Alas, the bank I have used no longer issues ATM-ony cards. I ask for that every year. They don’t even offer it as a non-default card.
If you do your own taxes, and are middle class, I see no need for an accountant for most of your work life. Reviewing with a financial advisor every few years unless independent in those decisions is something many might do, but not all.
On any given week, I am far more concerned with whether I have gotten enough exercise and eaten healthy food to assure the ability to spend that money in future, rather than thinking about balances in accounts that are more or less on autopilot. So while less than ideal, I can see being busy enough mid career, as my friends are, to not think about these things very often.
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Yes, I would like to know if there is a way to get a text alert when there’s some sort of withdrawal or movement in your account. That would be useful.
I totally understand people not checking their account. I convinced my mom to log on and check it, and she seemed terrified to even take a look. It made my jaw drop, I had no idea they’d saved so much (and invested very little of it). Some people are very uncomfortable with money.
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