Over the past 3 months I’ve been trying to eliminate my old employer accounts that are no longer funded into a new 457 account that I can actually put money into for simplicity sake. The goal is to take my 401a account and drop it into the 457 account at the same place… and move another 457 account that was opened for me when I was 16 at a separate agency, and drop it into the other 457 account…
And its been bad… so bad that I haven’t even bothered with trying to clear out my 2 Roth IRA’s and combine them until this nightmare has ended!
First, let’s start with the 401a
A year or so ago, my work put 1 or 2% of my salary into this account as a perk and after the first year or so they stopped doing it. All I wanted to do was take this money and put it into my new 457 account at ICMA-RC (Yes, same company that holds the 401a), all to no avail. I was sent multiple copies of different forms and after filling out over 3 different forms, I hit my breaking point when I went to the mail box about a week or so ago and in the same day I received 3 different letters asking me to do three different things to make the transaction happen.
I called the 1-800 number and begged for someone to help me and after finally getting someone on the phone they told me I would need to have a conference call with the person who has signing privileges at work, along with myself, and a member of ICMA-RC so they could get verbal permission for the funds to be moved with everyone all together. They even gave me a super-secret phone number to call and everything.
Sounds legit, right?
WRONG
The next day at work a gal from HR, me, and the director with signing powers all got on a conference call and called the number… and they were absolutely clueless as to why we were asked to call…
Then they started going on and on about the forms I needed to fill out and when they found out I’d filled out over 3 different forms to just make this one transaction happen, they just took my number and said they would call me back later that day with an answer as to why they were running into so many issues…
Eventually it was determined on my lunch break that they couldn’t move my 401a at all because it was employer money and was only allowed to be given to me if I quit/sever my employment… I can understand that, but can you imagine my frustration after spending how many hours and not to mention involving the big wigs at work to transfer an account that I was told was transferable by at least 8 people?????
So it looks like I'll still have a 401-a account and a 457 account, but there is a little silver lining when it comes to my old 457 account.
& now, the story of the 457 account...
While my HR rep and I were waiting for the call back about my 401a, we also called Nationwide about my inactive 457 account that I’ve had since I was 16 (with absolutely no investment options available)… that I have for the past 3 months been trying to move to my other 457 account so I can at least invest it in some target date funds.
So my HR rep called the employer line and then they had me verify a bunch of junk on the phone and then we got the final word that there was yet another different transfer out form we needed to complete that wasn't the one form they mailed to my house after receiving a request from IMAC-RC to take my money...
(Why can't people mail correct forms... that's what they are paid to do, is it not?)
Anyways, he said he would email the new correct form back to us, but he was going to transfer us to someone else to make sure he was absolutely sure since they had already made me fill out the wrong form once.
Fast forward after a 20 minute hold where the guy had to read all the notes in my file from all the calls that had been placed and the forms that had been sent in and the guy we were transferred to said it was yet another form that we needed to complete (not the form the other guy mentioned, nor the one I had already submitted)...
We were back to the 3 form shuffle folks...
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