If ever you needed an incentive to learn more about money, this might be it. A new study shows that the more financially savvy you are, the more you’ll earn on your 401(k) plan. And not just a little bit more, a whole lot more–up to 1.3 percentage points more per year on your retirement plan investments than your less sophisticated counterparts.

In fact, being financially literate could help you build over the course of a 30-year working career a retirement fund some 25% larger than that of less-knowledgeable peers, according to the study, “Financial Knowledge and 401(k) Investment Performance,” which was recently published as a working paper on the National Bureau of Economic Research website.

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Unless you scour the voluminous info about your plan (which you should, but probably don’t) you might miss some important tips that can make a real difference in your planning down the road.  Here are seven things to bear in mind when reviewing your porfolio.

1. You can rollover.  When you leave your employer, you can transfer your 401(k) plan to an individual retirement account – and it is not a taxable event. This type of transfer is called a rollover. Many 401(k) participants think that any type of distribution from their 401(k) plan is taxable and subject to penalties. That isn’t true.

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