<prompt> Human: My dad recommends rolling it into a Roth IRA. Hes hooked me up with his investment guy hes been with for 20 years. Im skeptical about a few things:The fact that Ill need to pay about 12,00-1,500 in taxes on it right awayThe fact that Ill need to pay this guy a feeWhat do you guys think?  <response>: Ok you should spend the next 2 weeks doing a lot of reading.There are two types of tax advantaged accountsTraditional Roth------where you dont pay taxes when you earn the money, but you do have to pay taxes on the entire balance when you take it out You fund these accounts with normal money that you have already paid taxes on usually taken care of by your tax withholding each paycheck. It sits in there and grows tax free, and you pay no taxes when you take it out.You can always convert from a work retirement plan 401k or 403b usually of one type to an individual retirement account of the same type without paying taxes. You could roll over a traditional 401k to a traditional IRA with no tax impactIt sounds like what your dad is recommending is to take a traditional 401k and put it in a Roth IRA. In this case, you have to pay the taxes now. If you rolled it over into a traditional IRA, you wouldnt. But you would have to pay taxes when you eventually withdraw in retirement!For simplicity, I would just roll it over into a traditional IRA and not pay any taxes. ___Second really important thing:an IRA and a 401k are just types of accounts, holders for INVESTMENTS. There are a million types of investments you can hold within your retirement account. Most are mutual funds containing stocks or bonds. You need to figure out what type of mutual funds you should be invested in within your retirement accounts. Your homework is to 1. Learn about asset allocation. figuring out what types of investments to hold within retirement accounts2. Learn about mutual funds sales loads A fee charged for purchasing or selling a mutual fund. You should never invest in a mutual fund with a sales load3. Expense Ratios. This is the percentage of your investment that you lose every year to pay for the administrative and management expenses of the mutual fund company. You should only invest in funds with expense ratios less than 0.3. This investment guy is probably a mutual fund salesmen. Not a financial advisor whatever he says.___One simple thing you can ask the investment guy:1. Can you give me the ticker symbols of the funds you are recommending?Come back here and post them, and I can look up the details and let you know if he is trying to screw you over.Most likely he is, and you can do much better by doing this yourself with Vanguard. 