Updates in this my week in personal finance:
- I finally made the call to get my 401K rolled over into an IRA. Why would I do this? I can control the expenses better in an IRA. The bad news is that I had to change my address from my move 6 months ago. Unfortunately changing the address is not easy. They need to send a form to that new address and I need to sign something. Faxing isn’t a solution it seems.
- I had a talk with Energi Gal today. I expressed that we should have a Financial Day. I’m not entirely sure of her financial state (though I can guess with-in a pretty small range). I’d especially like to roughly plan out our next five years. I don’t know why these are tough conversations, but it seems like no one likes to plan for the future
Non-personal finance thoughts:
- I’ve mentioned in this space various Silicon Valley billboards. Well, on the way to San Francisco from the peninsula I saw something that made me laugh out loud. There’s a place on the drive north on the 101 where you can see three billboards. Each of them is a cell phone provider proclaiming the best coverage in San Francisco – Sprint/Nextel, Cingular/AT&T, and Verizon are the three. I guess T-Mobile’s billboard is under construction.
- I’m a huge fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. For a show with a supernatural premise, the lessons learned carry through almost all of parts of life. Unfortunately this week, I was reminded of the Buffy show, Earshot (spoiler alert in the link and upcoming paragraph). It was originally scheduled to air the week following Columbine shootings. In the episode, there is a mix-up where the viewer is lead to believe that a student is going to commit a mass murder at a school. It turn out that it’s really a suicide attempt. The reason for the suicide attempt. From the Wikipedia article, “Buffy talks to him and tells him that the reason why everyone ignores him is because they all have their own problems that actually matter more to them than his do.”
- As long as I’m going to include the spoilers (and you’ve read this far), I might as well go all out. Here’s a quote from the powerful scene:
[Buffy finds Jonathan in the clocktower with a shotgun.] Jonathan: Go away!
Buffy: Never gonna happen.
Jonathan: You think I won’t use this?
Buffy: I don’t know, Jonathan. I just-
Jonathan: Stop doing that!
Buffy: Doing what?
Jonathan: Stop saying my name like we’re friends! We’re not friends! You all think I’m an idiot! A short idiot!
Buffy: I don’t. I don’t think about you much at all. Nobody here really does. Bugs you, doesn’t it? You have all this pain and all these feelings, and nobody’s really paying attention?
Jonathan: You think I just want attention?
Buffy: No. I think you’re up in the clock tower with a high-powered rifle because you wanna blend in. Believe it or not Jonathan, I understand about the pain.
Jonathan: Oh right! Because the burden of being beautiful and athletic, that’s a crippler!
Buffy: You know what? I was wrong. You are an idiot. My life happens to, on occasion, suck beyond the telling of it. Sometimes more than I can handle. And it’s not just mine. Every single person down there is ignoring your pain because they’re too busy with their own. The beautiful ones. The popular ones. The guys that pick on you. Everyone. If you could hear what they were feeling. The loneliness. The confusion. It looks quiet down there. It’s not. It’s deafening… You know, I could’ve taken that by now.
Jonathan: I know.
Buffy: [holds out hand] I’d rather do it this way.
Was this an old 401k I assume?
I would actually think it’s better to roll it into your current 401k, just because if at some point you need to establish a non-deductible IRA, it’ll be easier and more tax effecitent to roll over that ND IRA to Roth IRA without having a rollover IRA…
ah, what a great episode that was…
I recently rolled over an old 401K into an IRA with e-trade and it took forever. If you’re using them, make sure they validate the account or you’ll be in limobo forever like I was.
Oh man, Jonathan is my favorite character, just because of the way he was so slowly introduced into the show. It’s obvious that someone (casting agent? Joss?) adored him and wanted to put him in every episode possible.
I suppose I’m preaching to the choir now, but honestly, when you move you want to update the addresses on your investment accounts as soon as possible. When we moved two years ago we forgot about the accounts for two months, and when we contacted them to change the address was the same time they contacted us about our mail being undeliverable to the old address. Anyway, a pretty moderate snag but no evil came from it, just a lot of hassle. And lesson learned.
I’m sure they do it to protect your identity…. :-)