Death To-Do

Unrelated and unimportant: check out this pile of bird doo-doo. I'm weirdly impressed that it keeps adding to that spot, as if working toward a sculpture of sorts.

I missed posting last week due to some burning of both ends of the proverbial candle. I also had a plan for today's post that was hijacked by today's to-do, but before I get into that, let me revisit the last post momentarily to report that I received three responses to my story query. If all the material books disappeared and we had to rely on people who had memorized one book to pass along, we'd have It by Stephen King, The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, The Razor's Edge by W. Somerset Maugham, and, for my contribution, Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. Interesting, eh? I'd still love to hear from others if you come by this post and care to drop a comment or send me an email.

So today ...

I've been engaged in some activities lately that have me thinking about death and the responsibility to have one's affairs in order. I admit, as a single dude, I've been lax about this. I didn't even think I had that many affairs to order, but alas, the tentacles, those nasty legal and fiduciary labyrinths, have me in their grip, and I don't want to leave a mess. Time to get serious about this junk.

I started with the most important: last week I asked a friend to be on stand-by for Buddy and Freddy, my canine and feline companions respectively, should something happen to me and I delivered emergency contact information to three people. Pretty basic, right? As much as I think about death, you'd think I'd have taken care of this stuff, but nope.

Today, I started the financial slog. I've had lots of jobs. A couple have been with institutions that had retirement plans. After going through my dad's death and the after stuff, I learned that it's desirable to deal with as few of these financial institutions as possible because every one of them requires mountains of paperwork, hours on the phone, and lots of pulling the right levers if you ever hope to get funds released or transferred. Therefore, I decided consolidation of my accounts would best ease the process post-Tayo.

Enter the ROLL OVER. I think I've established in previous posts my ambivalence about money, an ambivalence that trends toward hatred. I don't speak "finance" and when others do, the sound transmits like the Peanuts' gang's teacher. But I have to do this. So, I did some research and determined I could do a roll over, which for all you other financial illiterates like me is a way of bringing the retirement funds contributed by a former employer (and you) into either the retirement plan offered by a new employer or to an IRA (if you are not on an employer's plan).

Here's How NOT to do a Roll Over:

Step one: call current holder of funds. Navigate through the automated system of "tell us what you want to do" and restart process several times because the robot is all like, "sorry, I didn't catch that. Did you want to ..." Listen again to the long list of options, state selection, again have the robot inform you of your speech impediment, visualize mobius strip, watch as the sands of your life's hourglass stream into oblivion.

Step two: successfully get transferred through different agents until you reach the specialist in Dallas. Samuel, you can tell, is poised to help but also to try to persuade you not to do what you are trying to do (take money from his children's mouths). Samuel tells you that you can mostly do what you want to do except that a portion of one of the funds has been invested in what's called a fixed annuity. This money cannot be transferred in a lump sum. If you want that money, you will have to take payments over the next ten years. The dream of consolidation is now a dream deferred.

Step three: you proceed to consolidate the rest because it completely torks you off that some of your money was invested this way. You ask Samuel to prepare the necessary forms. You will get four of them within the hour. Meanwhile, you need to open a receiving account.

Step four: call destination company to open IRA account to receive rolled over funds. You go through the online application process and after reaching the last "submit" screen receive message: "cannot complete this transaction online ... sorry for inconvenience ... please call ..."

Step five: call destination investment company. First rep establishes your identity by asking several security questions. You are relieved you can remember the answers you made up when you set up the original account. This is a bit of magic and while you self-congratulate, the agent tells you to click on the "open account" but from a different drop-down menu and then you walk through the entire process again, only, of course, to end up at the exact same place: "cannot complete ... yada yada yada.

Step six: transferred to specialist. Go through process again. Before submitting, Special Agent Open IRA Account has you turn off your VPN. Website doesn't work if you have a VPN. Okay then. Account opened. Leave with two digital documents indicating this institution agreed to accept funds from sending institution. You think getting married might be easier than this.

Step seven: open the first of the four documents to begin the roll over from, let's call them Institution A, or IA, for short. On question two you realize you are too literal and too stupid to do this without help so you call IA (not to be confused with AI). Repeat navigation of automated system, realizing you failed to learn an effective shortcut last time.

Step eight: a wonderful, patient guy actually walks you through EVERY question on all four forms. This takes nearly an hour. Jokes are exchanged, various self-deprecations ventured, assurances given. The crux of the matter at this point is that two forms address the fact that some of the funds are IRA and some are ROTH IRA, and two forms address the funds that are and aren't part of the fixed annuity. Three forms need the destination account number of the IRA; one form needs the ROTH account number.

If you are Tayo, you put the ROTH number on all four forms.

Step nine: discover your error AFTER hanging up with the babysitter, hand-holding guy, after submitting the forms, and realize in horror that the very thing you sought to do--avoid a stupid, costly mistake that involved the IRS--is exactly what you've done.

Step ten: panic-dial IA, go through stupid-ass automated system that you STILL can't get around, and get another guy. Admit error. He tells you he must regenerate all the forms and that you'll have to complete them again, at least the signature portion. In trying to establish exactly what is wrong, you notice that perhaps you aren't being clear, that the problem isn't well-understood. What's worse, in your little mind, is that more forms populate the "pending forms" area but the old forms don't go away. You complete the new requests but are worried that the old forms with the mistakes aren't going away. They are still in the queue. You ask about this. You are told not to worry, that someone somewhere will see there are duplicates. You hang up. You download the files and review because something doesn't feel right.

Step eleven: explode with rage! The first form you review has all the right changes EXCEPT one toggle box: the "traditional IRA" box is checked when it should be "ROTH IRA." The account number is correct but that box, that toggle ...

Step twelve: call IA. Yell at the automated system. Get another dude. Dude generates new form for the one in error, you complete the form and check and recheck everything before submitting, and can now say that one form, at least, is correct. Before you hang up, you ask: what about all these forms with the wrong information? Can you delete them? No, no, they can't be deleted. This is just not possible, but he will put a "note" on them.

You end the call and the effort with zero confidence this is going to turn out well. In fact you already know that you'll have to call again tomorrow and just go through this all again with someone else just to ease your mind a little.

***

I caused most of this fiasco myself, to be sure, but holy smokes, this was just ONE task on my death to-do list. My meager take-away from today? Maybe save "buy cremation services" for very last just in case I inadvertently check the wrong box and end up in a furnace.