ignorance

I don't pretend to know about investments, stock etc but I had a crash course today. I have a 401 k plan with my former employer where I had worked for almost 15 years. I picked a few funds and just watched it grow quarterly. It was nice and there was a period of rapid growth but recently this former company was bought out. Soon after I received the notices that I own stock at my former employer and I need to take action. Either accept the offer or I can sell the stock. it was actually more complicated than that and I spoke to several people about my options. After a hour of listening to explanations, I was transferred to a financial advisor who suggested I sell the stock since it closed a bit higher than the offered price from the company. Okay...so I have to call the 401 k company again and tell them to sell it now. Meanwhile I log onto the website and holy moly, my shares total up to a very large amount of money! I could only find my statement from June which had the stock at $41.00/share and today it was $71.75/share. Sweet.

Now I need to figure out my next move which is probably rolling everything over to an IRA and meeting with the advisor to give me the best options for investing. I also to need to take a little more active role in my finances since it's now at a larger amount so I need to protect it while investing wisely. I guess I have to grow up.