A common retirement strategy can erode your IRA savings, Pew report finds

Individual retirement accounts, or IRAs, are the dominant retirement account in America today. Nearly 4 in 10 Americans have one, and, as of last year, these accounts held $13.5 trillion in total assets, according to Alicia Munnell, director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. 

But those would-be retirees are losing billions of dollars to high IRA fees when they roll their 401(k) accounts into similar IRA accounts — even if they choose the same underlying investment, according to a Pew analysis released last week. 

Those relatively small differences in fees can snowball into big losses over time, Pew found. That's particularly damaging because retirees typically live on fixed incomes, which means a reduction in a worker's potential retirement savings can have a long-lasting impact on their standard of living when in retirement.