there should be no penalty when they consolidate in one 401k, depnds with whom they are and the return you get, may be an interesting risk spreading politics if they are all invested differently.

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You should consolidate them all into one Roth IRA. No reason to keep old 401ks in 401ks unless your looking to take loans later on the plan later on.

Yes, consolidate them into a Roth. There is nothing better than tax deferred growth and tax free income at retirement. Especially with tax rates about to be raised. This will also allow you to manage your assets better than having multiple accounts.

First, I congratulate you for choosing to contribute to multiple Roth 401Ks as it is a wise choice since taxes are going to skyrocket in the near future. Second, I can only assume that you have multiple 401Ks because you have left previous employers. If this is correct, then you may consider rolling all of them over into one Roth IRA. This would give you much more investment flexibility then if you simply rolled them into your current 401K. The only disadvantage is that IRAs don't have as much creditor protection as 401Ks.

Hi,

I would think that it would be more advantageous to consolidate your funds in one account for leverage (ie. earning 6-9 percent interested on a big pile of money rather than on small piles of money). That being said this is my very first post about retirement/401k's as I have finally gotten around to making this topic area a real priority. (Fortunately I'm not yet 30)

I hear this argument all the time and it's incorrect.

Consider this:

401k 1: 100k (6% of 100k=6k)
401k 2: 100k (6% of 100k=6k)
401k 3: 100k (6% of 100k=6k)
Total Return: 18k

IRA/401k Consolidated Account: 300k (6% of 300k=18k)

Of course this is assuming all your accounts invested identically.

I will reiterate what's already been said. Consolidate your 401ks from previous employers to a single IRA (unless you plan to take loans which I'd never encourage from a 401k unless you have to). If your previous companies go belly up, you may have a headache on your hands to get your money. It's in much better hands under your control in an IRA.