“Simplifying” My Retirement Accounts: Half Two Of The Epic Rollover Saga Of DOOM!

In Half One of many Nice Rollover Saga, your daring and feisty professional­tag­o­nist had close to­ly misplaced her thoughts deal­ing with the var­i­ous peo­ple concerned in attempt­ing to get each­factor trans­ferred over. Out of three accounts (all finished on the identical time as a result of why not?), not considered one of them was settle for­ed after the ini­tial spherical of effort. 

It was time to get seri­ous for Spherical Two. 

Nicely.….…. it was time to get seri­ous after the entire plan obtained inter­rupt­ed by your favourite daring and feisty  weblog­ger becom­ing a comatose, fever­ish mess for a week after suc­cumb­ing to Covid. (I’m positive now however I didn’t have the ener­gy to make meals, not to mention argue with peo­ple on the telephone. To not males­tion I saved cough­ing like a 30-year smoker.)

After I recov­ered from Covid, I resumed my efforts. I was not going to be defeat­ed by this rollover course of. I obtained two emails from the ben­e­matches cen­ter that my doc­u­ments had been acquired. This was incred­i­bly stress­ful since I despatched 3 envelopes, however the final con­fir­ma­tion electronic mail arrived the fol­low­ing day, so whereas the anx­i­ety was fierce, it was short-lived. Fortunately. 

Spherical Two for Prime

Prime, in the event you recall, is the primary 401(okay) account from the primary com­pa­ny to make use of me. I despatched within the paper verify, the shape from the ben­e­matches cen­ter, and the plan infor­ma­tion that includ­ed the Let­ter of Deter­mi­na­tion (LoD) from the IRS that it got here from a qual­i­fied plan. The shape was good, the verify was incor­rect­ly addressed, they usually missed the LoD state­ment within the stack of paper­work. I used the chat func­tion to speak to an make use of­ee on the ben­e­matches cen­ter and copied the tran­script right into a Phrase doc so I had a document of what was stated. That got here very in helpful. So, I was capable of get them to simply accept the LoD however the verify was nonetheless incor­rect­ly made out. They’d reject­ed the verify and had been going to ship it again to me within the mail with me none the wis­er if I had­n’t fol­lowed up. The con­fir­ma­tion emails I obtained stated to permit two busi­ness days for professional­cess­ing so after every batch of mail was settle for­ed, I needed to name in two days lat­er to see what excit­ing and received­der­ful issues I needed to do subsequent. 

To do for spherical 3: get a new verify stuffed out cor­rect­ly and mail it in.

Spherical Two for Triangle

The verify for Tri­an­gle was despatched direct­ly from Van­guard to the ben­e­matches cen­ter in order that was one much less stres­sor on me. I was instructed the 1099‑R can be ade­quate infor­ma­tion for them, however they instructed me the fallacious infor­ma­tion. It was not sufficient for the LoD, however it was sufficient to depend as my dis­tri­b­u­tion assertion.

Extra on that later.

The prob­lem with this one was the mon­ey was rolled over into an IRA, so it was­n’t tech­ni­cal­ly an make use of­er retire­ment account any­extra and I did­n’t have entry to the LoD any­extra. An hour on maintain with Van­guard simply to speak to some­one led to 2 trans­fers with the req­ui­website iden­ti­ty ver­i­fi­ca­tion ques­tions and mul­ti­ple holds as they tried to seek out the LoD from the orig­i­nal plan. Mirac­u­lous­ly, they had been capable of finding it for me AND it was despatched to my mes­sage cen­ter on-line the subsequent day. No mail! Woo! So the subsequent day I down­loaded the pdf assertion. 

I used to be all set to print it out and mail it, however then I dis­cov­ered the ben­e­matches cen­ter had a very clev­er­ly hid­den on-line doc­u­ment add hyperlink. I uploaded the LoD and, no joke, it was settle for­ed with the mon­ey deposit­ed into my cur­lease 401(okay) account a few days lat­er. IT WAS A MIRACLE. 

Spherical 3 to do: Nothing! 

Spherical Two for Southdown

This was bru­tal, y’all. This account was miss­ing each the let­ter of deter­mi­na­tion and the dis­tri­b­u­tion state­ment; the verify was actu­al­ly addressed cor­rect­ly in order that was­n’t a difficulty. As soon as once more, I needed to name again the orig­i­nal make investments­ment com­pa­ny and get them to ship the doc­u­ments to me. They agreed to ship the let­ter of deter­mi­na­tion straight to my ben­e­matches cen­ter tackle as a substitute of utilizing me because the mid­dle (wo)man. The dis­tri­b­u­tion state­ment took a lit­tle longer for them to seek out and ship to me within the mail. 

BUT. A stroke of luck! I discovered the orig­i­nal doc­u­ments, took a pic­ture, and uploaded it to the received­der­ful peo­ple on the ben­e­matches cen­ter. It was settle for­ed earlier than I obtained the pack­et within the mail! 

Spherical 3 to do: Nothing!

Spherical Three for Prime

I referred to as Fideli­ty again as soon as once more and went over the problem with them. They will­celed the primary verify and issued a new verify that was cor­rect­ly addressed. You understand how there’s a say­ing that claims “Shut solely counts in horse­footwear and hand grenades”? Nicely, this was accu­fee as a result of the verify was close to­ly addressed cor­rect­ly. However not fairly. So I obtained that addressed, they mailed the verify to me, I despatched it on to the ben­e­matches cen­ter and it was settle for­ed. FINALLY.

Spherical 3 to do: Nothing!

Last Ideas

Ulti­mate­ly, despite the fact that it was the world’s greatest ache within the ass course of, I’m grate­ful I went by means of all of the has­sle. Hav­ing one account to verify every month for my updates is WONDERFUL. Issues are a lot eas­i­er once I don’t should verify three dif­fer­ent accounts and add all of them up for one cell within the unfold­sheet. It’d appear to be rel­a­tive­ly minor enhance­ments, however any hur­dle I can take away is ben­e­fi­cial to my sil­ly mind that likes to con­vince me there are too many steps.

The oth­er main ben­e­match got here once I inter­seen for the brand new job at my cur­lease make use of­er. A part of the display screen­ing require­ments for the brand new job concerned verify­ing into my funds to verify there aren’t any con­flicts of inter­est that may inter­fere with my abil­i­ty to be an impar­tial decide at shopper websites. As a substitute of hav­ing to listing out all these for­mer 401k accounts, I did­n’t should listing any in any respect since they had been capable of see what my make use of­er-spon­sored retire­ment accounts seemed like. That sim­pli­fied the inter­view HR did with me, so all this effort was­n’t wast­ed after all! 

That being stated, I don’t need to undergo the rollover course of once more any­time quickly! If I’ll want to do this sooner or later, I hope the method has developed to take advan­tage of tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ments like intra-com­pa­ny fund trans­fers. Whereas I’m at it, I’d additionally wish to want for a pur­ple pony! Ha!

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