
Ask HN: Can you ever close a 401K account? - magnetic
After my employment was terminated with my company last July, I decided to fold my 401K account into another account that I use for consolidation purposes (as a full distribution - non taxable event).<p>A few months later I kept getting emails about that 401K account, and was able to log into the administrator&#x27;s website to see that the account was alive, albeit with a $0 balance. I called the company and asked to close the account, and was told they couldn&#x27;t do it. I asked if there was a way for me to remove all my PII from their system at some point (ie until there is no legal reason for them to keep it) and was told no.<p>So now this account lives somewhere, with no activity, but still open. The representative on the phone guaranteed me that there would be no maintenance fees or fees of any kind coming my way, but I know what verbal guarantees are worth.<p>Perhaps my C++ coding-OCD is being overzealous in pushing me to call the destructor on that account, but I think I&#x27;d be more comfortable if I didn&#x27;t have to keep track of &quot;inactive accounts&quot; left and right, not to mention my PII is now needlessly at the mercy of their security.<p>Is this standard practice?
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wj
Like any bank account you're never going to be able to completely purge that
data. The financial institution needs to keep the records not just for
compliance (potential audit situations) but because all of your transactions
did occur and tie to something else in their systems.

I would imagine that after the plan year is over (typically a calendar year
but not necessarily) you'll stop getting emails. If they ever change 401(k)
providers then your data as a terminated employee would not be moved over to
the new recordkeeper.

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dv_dt
That's not normal. Upon leaving previous employers, every single 401k account
of mine was closed after rollout. Though sometimes this might be months after
the rollout - because the account might have to stay open to receive various
late account reconciliations. So sometimes amounts as low as a few bucks or
even cents will show up later from sources like dividends earned during the
past time periods. But they were all eventually closed.

