NinjaPigeon - My Flight to Financial Independence

Monday, April 09, 2007

Rolling over my 401k... again

Last year, when I left my job at a medium sized company and joined Megacorp, I needed to get my money out of their 401k plan. So, I did a rollover from a Fidelity 401k to a Vanguard IRA.

One of the quirks that tripped me up then was that my previous employer had not updated my status as no longer being an active employee. That ended up costing me a week or so of time. So, this time I thought to call and ask about that first.

Well, when I called, they informed me I was indeed out of the plan and I could start the process if I wanted. I decided to do so, and found out this experience will be slightly different than the last one.

Specifically, my money at Fidelity is actually in a BrokerageLink account, and not directly in the 401k plan. So, I first have to liquidate my shares in the BrokerageLink account and have them transferred back into the plan. Once that has happened, I can then call back to request a check be cut.

My shares should be sold tomorrow at market close. I will try to contact Vanguard tomorrow and confirm that the check needs to be made out the same as last time.

End of Balance Transfer Promo

Well, it's been a year since I signed up for a 0% balance transfer from Citibank. I estimate that I made about $600 in interest from their money, but I haven't had time to fully calculate it.

Since I knew the promo date was due to expire, I called Citibank and asked the date it would end. They informed me it would end on the 16th of April. So, sometime last week I pulled the remaining money out of my EmigrantDirect account. Then I paid off Citibank. I estimate it took maybe 2 hours of work over the last year to earn the money. Not too shabby!

Sadly, I'm now out of BT money. I am thinking about applying for some more, but I won't go crazy and pull an app-o-rama since I plan on buying a new car in December or January. But 10 or 15k couldn't hurt!