It’s staring you in the face: the pink slip. The locked door. The Please, hand over your keycard right now because we’re letting you go. We live in a time and economy where things like jobs have about as much security as a porcelain piggy bank. Your money might be safe—more or less, considering the dips and rises in the stock market—but when your job loses its safety, what do you do? When that pink slip comes, what comes next—speaking specifically, what do you do about a 401k rollover?

Usually you need to take the step toward a 401k rollover for the basic reason outlined above: you are no longer connected with the company previously providing your 401(k). Whether this is as a result of your own negligence, the company’s downsizing, or your awesome new career move doesn’t matter. Your 401(k) is sitting there, with your old employer, waiting to be picked up and used. Assuming you’re under 59 ½ (which is the minimum age for penalty-free 401k withdrawals), you know that you need to get to work on doing something about that 401k. Even if you are under the penalty-free age, you may still consider pulling it out instead of rolling it over. But consider carefully: is that really going to be the best for your financial future?

The reason we ask is that you have more options than one for rolling over your 401k. Your 401k rollover can be accomplished by linking up with various types of IRAs (individual retirement accounts) or with another 401k. If you’re not yet long in the tooth, you might want to look into the option of rolling over into a new 401k. After all, unless you do settle on cashing out and trying to live on those retirement savings from here on out, you’ll probably be looking for—or already have found—a new job. Often, that new job will have a 401(k) plan set up for its employees. And guess what?

As soon as you start there, you’re just such an employee. So that’s the trick to accomplishing a good 401k rollover: knowing where to put it. If you are in a new job with a new 401k account, by all means have a good look over the options that they offer. If you decide to target that account with your 401k rollover, you get two significant benefits. The first is that the rollover process incurs no charges from the IRS. Sure, your new company or your old company might stick you with a transaction fee of some sort (though most do try to avoid being too big of jerks), but it’s a pittance compared to what the IRS could nail you with. Now, that isn’t to say that the IRS is stalking the halls ready to pounce on anything going into an IRA; on the contrary, rolling over into an IRA is a good possibility, too. It’s just that if you have a 401k plan at your new job, why not take advantage of it?

Okay, fair enough; employers’ 401k plans can be kind of restrictive. But let’s be reasonable here: if you do your homework and it seems straightforward, wouldn’t you want to keep your money as stable as possible? Besides, when the pink slip or the phone call or the job offer comes knocking again, you know where your money is and can just shuttle it along, penalty-free.