AboutDavid M Iannopollo Expertise I am a professional financial advisor who can assist you with answers on mutual funds, annuities, IRA's, rollovers, qualified and non-qualified retirement plans, retirement planning, educational planning, life, disability and LTC insurances.
Experience I have over 20 years experience in the business and financial world.
Question I am a non-traditional student who is now in nursing school. The program is rigorous and it is almost impossible to work right now. I have student loans but I'm finding it hard to make ends meet and I have three months to go before this semester is over! I have contacted TIAA-CREF in the past to see if I could either get a loan using my retirement or just pull money out. Basically they said no, you cannot do either. Is this something worth pursuing or should I just assume the person I talked with knows what they are talking about? I don't have much retirement, but what I'm doing now will allow me to actually put something toward retirement when I finish with the program.
Answer Hi Lisa,
Actually, they may be right depending on the plan you are in. Retirement plans can have different rules depending on how they are written and your plan may not allow loans. I have also seen TIAA-CREF plans where you cannot even rollover your funds until you are retirement age. Even if you leave your employer! Thus, TIAA-CREF offers low investment fees as they lock up your money for years, even if you are no longer participating in the plan.
You can however, ask them to show you in the plan document or summary plan description where it says that you cannot take a loan or distribution. If it says you can't, you can't. No one really reads these things when they enroll in a plan. So when they sign up, they are agreeing to these terms whether they know it or not. I have run across many TIAA-CREF plan participants who find this stuff out later. In fact, we just ran across a bunch of college professors who retired early only to find out they they couldn't access their TIAA-CREF funds for a few more years. Many of them had to go back to work as a result!
My advice is to stay away from TIAA-CREF and do your retirement planning on your own unless you are going to get some type of decent employer contribution. I hope this helps. Best of luck!
