Wednesday, May 13, 1998

With Responsibility Comes Terror
By Mark Rosneck ([email protected])

This winter I became Foolish after coming to the realization that retiring with money was a considerably better idea than the alternative.

In a job far, far away I had established a 401(k) and had fairly randomly picked from the alternative buckets into which I could toss money. Fortunately, I picked reasonably good buckets and there was now a considerable pile resting there. With my new Foolish wisdom, I decided I better corral these piles into a spot where I had more direct control and from which I could execute some Foolish strategies.

After a lot of research, I chose my discount broker who is... well, let's let them be anonymous. I make the call to the Benefits Department of the former employer where I learned they can only issue me a check and cannot do a direct rollover to the discount broker. Not really a problem although I really don't like the idea of handling a check of this size. I start having nightmares about exceeding the 60-day holding period and having friendly IRS agents swarming into all of my accounts in search of penalties and interest. (By the way, if you happen to be with the IRS, I doubt that you folks actually swarm in any meaningful numbers and I promise not to call you foolish. I think I'll play it safe and avoid Foolish as well.)

Now I have a check that's six figures long hanging on my refrigerator door. Methinks while it's kind of novel to have a six-figure check on the fridge, perhaps I should move things along. I call the discount broker to get the proper form and they send me the wrong one. I call them back and this time get someone who understands and I receive the proper form. At this point, we're well into the 60-day period so while I'm not terrified, I am starting to get a wee bit stressed.

We're about to the Terror part so this is where you might want to go back to reading something more soothing such as the Communion of Bears Message Board.

Here it is -- the discount broker entered my six-figure check as a five-figure amount and my retirement took an order of magnitude drop in a single day. Now that's terror and my stress level hit record highs.

I was calm. I was reasoned. They said "Oops" and they gave me a couple free trades in compensation. Everything's right and Foolish with the world again. If it hadn't been for the immediacy of the Internet, they might not have discovered the error before the next monthly statement and I would have never been the wiser. Or maybe not.

I've survived the Terror and learned a bit in the process. I'm happy with the service I received from the discount broker, although I wish they'd get folks with a little better typing skills. All and all, it's better to suffer the possibilities of the occasional foul up in exchange for taking control of your finances. Unless, of course, Tom and David finally admit that the April 1 article wasn't really an April Fools joke, in which case I'm going to reevaluate the benefits of storing money under my mattress.

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