So here you are a few years (decades?) out in the workforce and you have a decent, if not great, retirement fund saved up. It's not much, but it's a start. But somehow you get the feeling it's become unmanageable. This is especially true if you've changed jobs a time or three and each time you leave your retirement savings in your old employer's 401(k) plan. Or maybe you've rolled them into your own IRAs under the 401(k) manager's account structure.

Here are four reasons why it's generally better to consolidate those retirement accounts into as few accounts as possible. For many that will mean a single IRA account and a single 401(k).

1. More choices - Many 401(k) retirement savings plans only offer a few choices for mutual funds and other investment vehicles to chose from. Move your money into your own IRA, and you can invest in a much broader array of investments. Stocks, bonds, Exchange Traded Funds or even mutual funds.
2. Better Control - Something else you'll want to consider is having access to your money when you want it. You might find some portion of your retirement investment unavailable for a period of time should one of your former employers decide to contract with a new 401(k) provider. Today merges and bankruptcy are realities among the financial community. Any of these are outside your control and could affect your ability to access your retirement investment nest egg.
3. The forest, not the trees. You want a complete picture of your retirement savings. You want it to be accurate and up to date. It would also be nice if you could get that all on one page. Put all your IRA accounts into a single account and you'll have a single sign-on view of your savings.
4. Simplified record keeping - an additional benefit of having only one account where you keep your IRA and one 401(k) account is that you'll only have one account statement for each type of retirement account to keep up with. Who wants to deal with an unnecessarily large stack of paper each spring when doing taxes?

Do you know of other reasons? There are plenty I'm sure. These alone are enough for me to consolidate my accounts and my wife's IRA accounts into only two IRA accounts.