Remember a few weeks ago I wrote about my friend, Bill, whose company had offered him an early retirement? One of the tools his company made available in the decision making process for employees was a webcast. Those that couldn't make the webcast could download the presentation and listen to a recording of the conference call.

Bill showed me the presentation over the weekend and I flipped to the Q&A portion at the end to see what kinds of questions prospective retirees had been asking.

The one that caught my eye first was a question from an employee about whether he should roll his 401(k) into his own IRA, or whether he should leave it where it was. See, the retirement offer gave employees the option to continue in the company's 401(k) plan or to roll those funds over into their own private account. The answer alarmed me.

It wasn't clear whether the answer had been written by the company Bill worked for or by the company's 401(k) plan administrator. Either way, I thought it bordered on the irresponsible. In essence the answer was intended to gently sway retirees to leave the funds in the 401(k) plan instead of rolling them over into their own IRA.

Rest assured the response I read was carefully written with plenty of "this is not financial advice" wording. It's a good bet that corporate legal had a go at the wording too.

My advice to Bill: Be careful to separate the facts from the sales pitch. And where there are no facts presented the conservative approach is to assume the facts do not work in your favor.

The fact is, the company administering Bill's 401(k) plan makes it very difficult to uncover the costs incurred by participants for expenses and fees. The plan offers employees plenty of mutual fund choices. But few of those mutual funds are available outside the structure of the company's 401(k) plan. In essence, they're boutique funds set up expressly for 401(k) plan use.

I urged Bill to roll is 401(k) over into his own IRA should he decide to take the retirement buyout offer. My logic is simple: If the literature subtly sells the idea of leaving your retirement nest egg in the 401(k) plan and the plan's fees and expenses aren't disclosed, then it's a fair bet the no-rollover option is the more profitable choice (for them, not the employee).

There is no doubt the 401(k) is one of the greatest things to come our way. Not taking full advantage of it is foolish. But taking full advantage of it also entails rolling it over into your own IRA account at the first opportunity.