Retirement planning is hard
I keep getting notices from my previous place of employment, telling me that I have a teeny tiny amount of money in their 401k program and the tininess of it is bothersome to them and will I please remove it from their sight at once. So, I called up my guys (they take of my car insurance and home insurance and my credit card debt and the IRA) to ask them to take me by the hand and free my money from The Man. (My guys are not The Man, they were nice to me when some jerk broke my window and stole my wallet so I refuse to think of them as The Man.) Turns out I have a Roth IRA and not a traditional IRA so I can't roll money into it from a 401K. Why is this? I don't know. So after filling out various forms and deciding on very grown up things like what funds to place my teeny tiny amount of money in, I was done. The form was emailed to me instantly and I sent it back in while we were still on the phone. My very friendly guy reminded me that I need to start thinking about college planning too, he wasn't mean about it though. Gosh, I like those guys.
Then I called The Man. Instead of talking to a person, I got a phone tree. I pressed all the right buttons and then it asked me for my PIN number. PIN number? I don't recall ever establishing a PIN number. I tried punching in one of my usual ones. Nope. Another old standby. Nope. Finally the phone tree became exasperated with me and put me on hold to speak with a person. After a lengthy delay, during which I was reminded that I could be doing all this online with my PIN number, I finally spoke with a very surly woman who sounded quite astonished that I didn't remember my PIN number. "But I'm looking at it right here! You went online and established a PIN number. It's eight digits long. Does that ring any bells? You didn't write it down? You chose it for yourself! It says right here that you did this in 2004." Lady, that was two years ago. I don't even remember what I had for dinner on Monday night let alone an eight digit pin number I alledgedly established for myself two years ago. I don't really believe I did it. I always use variations of the same passwords and none of them is eight digits long. With a big long sigh, she told me she could mail me my password and then I could call her back and have my form mailed to me. Why couldn't she just mail me the form if she was all set to mail a pin number to the very same address? It's just a form, it's not like she was going to mail me a check. Apparently, the procedures are very strict and important to follow. First we mail the pin number, then we mail the form. There is no room for step skipping here.
Some day when I spend all this retirement money on something fabulous like one trip to the grocery store or a couple nights at a Hampton Inn, I going to remind myself that all this trouble was worth it. Soooo worth it.
Then I called The Man. Instead of talking to a person, I got a phone tree. I pressed all the right buttons and then it asked me for my PIN number. PIN number? I don't recall ever establishing a PIN number. I tried punching in one of my usual ones. Nope. Another old standby. Nope. Finally the phone tree became exasperated with me and put me on hold to speak with a person. After a lengthy delay, during which I was reminded that I could be doing all this online with my PIN number, I finally spoke with a very surly woman who sounded quite astonished that I didn't remember my PIN number. "But I'm looking at it right here! You went online and established a PIN number. It's eight digits long. Does that ring any bells? You didn't write it down? You chose it for yourself! It says right here that you did this in 2004." Lady, that was two years ago. I don't even remember what I had for dinner on Monday night let alone an eight digit pin number I alledgedly established for myself two years ago. I don't really believe I did it. I always use variations of the same passwords and none of them is eight digits long. With a big long sigh, she told me she could mail me my password and then I could call her back and have my form mailed to me. Why couldn't she just mail me the form if she was all set to mail a pin number to the very same address? It's just a form, it's not like she was going to mail me a check. Apparently, the procedures are very strict and important to follow. First we mail the pin number, then we mail the form. There is no room for step skipping here.
Some day when I spend all this retirement money on something fabulous like one trip to the grocery store or a couple nights at a Hampton Inn, I going to remind myself that all this trouble was worth it. Soooo worth it.
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