In Short-Term Limbo
As I shared a few weeks ago, I’m in the process of moving the money from my workplace retirement accounts at Fidelity to my rollover IRA at Schwab.
This, like other aspects of my retirement transition, has had its bumps in the road. Fidelity will only mail a check to your home, no electronic or direct transfers, so I called them a couple of days before we left San Diego last week to begin the process. The phone call went smoothly, and we had already completed the process of transferring my 403B account, when the agent said, “Oh. You can’t roll over your 457 or DCP accounts until you’ve been separated (he actually said “terminated,” which I balked at) for 31 days.” So now I have to call again next week to do the other half of the transfer.
So I paid $25 to have my check from the 403B expedited and got a UPS notification that it would be delivered on Monday (7/21). I (wrongly) thought someone would have to sign for it, so I made sure someone was home all day, though it didn’t arrive until 8:40 p.m.—and then was just tossed on our doorstep with a doorbell ring. The envelope made it clear that it was financial papers. I hate the idea that such a large check could have been sitting in front of our condo if we hadn’t been there (or worse, in front of our building—some UPS drivers don’t bother looking up the code to get in).
On advice of the Schwab rollover specialist, I hand-delivered the check to the local Schwab branch yesterday rather than putting it back into the mail. The guy there told me it should get deposited into my IRA by this afternoon and then I’d have to decide how to invest it. We talked for a couple of minutes about the upcoming August 1 tariff “deadline” and whether it might be prudent to hedge my bets for a couple of weeks by just putting the funds into a money market account for now. He said that’s what he would do if he were in my shoes. His argument is that the market has already corrected upwards, assuming Trump will again not go through with the tariffs, and it’s not likely to make another big jump if Aug 1 comes and goes without much drama. It could go down if Trump actually follows through this time, though. My husband, who keeps up with this stuff way more than I do, agrees with this analysis.
Any thoughts?
This, like other aspects of my retirement transition, has had its bumps in the road. Fidelity will only mail a check to your home, no electronic or direct transfers, so I called them a couple of days before we left San Diego last week to begin the process. The phone call went smoothly, and we had already completed the process of transferring my 403B account, when the agent said, “Oh. You can’t roll over your 457 or DCP accounts until you’ve been separated (he actually said “terminated,” which I balked at) for 31 days.” So now I have to call again next week to do the other half of the transfer.
So I paid $25 to have my check from the 403B expedited and got a UPS notification that it would be delivered on Monday (7/21). I (wrongly) thought someone would have to sign for it, so I made sure someone was home all day, though it didn’t arrive until 8:40 p.m.—and then was just tossed on our doorstep with a doorbell ring. The envelope made it clear that it was financial papers. I hate the idea that such a large check could have been sitting in front of our condo if we hadn’t been there (or worse, in front of our building—some UPS drivers don’t bother looking up the code to get in).
On advice of the Schwab rollover specialist, I hand-delivered the check to the local Schwab branch yesterday rather than putting it back into the mail. The guy there told me it should get deposited into my IRA by this afternoon and then I’d have to decide how to invest it. We talked for a couple of minutes about the upcoming August 1 tariff “deadline” and whether it might be prudent to hedge my bets for a couple of weeks by just putting the funds into a money market account for now. He said that’s what he would do if he were in my shoes. His argument is that the market has already corrected upwards, assuming Trump will again not go through with the tariffs, and it’s not likely to make another big jump if Aug 1 comes and goes without much drama. It could go down if Trump actually follows through this time, though. My husband, who keeps up with this stuff way more than I do, agrees with this analysis.
Any thoughts?
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