IRA Account

[hmcq]

Question for all those hard working people in the US who have one or have started one.

1) how do you start an IRA account?
2) How can I rollover my money from my 401-K so that I don't end up paying early withdrawl fees
3) And can I play with opens in an IRA or does it all have to mutual funds and shares?

Please advice.
My understanding so far is that I can simply setup and IRA account at say datek, tell my 401-k company I need a direct rollover, they will convert my current holdings into cash (I believe you can not transfer funds, just the cash value on date of transfer), transfer it into the datek account and then I get to apply all my new learnt skills of financial mismangement http://www3.pak.org/gupshup/smilies/smile.gif.

Let me know if I am on track and if anyone of you have done this before.
Thanks.

[Mr Fraudia]

hmcq

u got it..essentially datek should take care of it all. just give them contact informatyion of your HR people etc and Datek will do all the leg work, the funds get released to datek and you can tell them how you want your investments distributed.

I rolled over a 401k using my bank and it was painless.

[hmcq]

Do you know if they let you play with options and commodities?

[Mr Fraudia]

hmcq it really depends on who your new trustee is. I prefer mutual funds and have not looked for any where they let you deal with futures and options types of deals