This is Charles Schwab. Forbes estimates his personal wealth to be about 10.6 billion dollars. He holds the not-quite-so-much money I'm going to be depending on for the rest of my life. And he's not giving it back to me easily.
Yesterday I went onto my Charles Schwab brokerage account to begin my first retirement distribution since I am now aged 59 and a half, with at least an extra week or two leeway. Silly me, in this age of click a virtual button and everything is instantaneous, I thought it'd be a simple process of requesting an online transfer of the amount of money of my choosing from my IRA account to my personal checking account. Oh yes, I knew that being essentially two different banks there was going to be that little micro transaction BS that they do to verify that it's an actual account. They deposit a few cents and then withdraw those few cents a few seconds later to see if money will transmit? Freaking stupid I know. I also figured there be something like a three-day waiting period to transfer money from one bank to another. That's usual, although pretty stupid as well. Banks don't like you to take your money so they play these little games. Every second they hold on to your money, they're making investment income on it.
But low and behold, I'd forgotten how much of a process it is to take a retirement fund distribution.
I'd taken distributions in the past, of course. The first was about a couple of thousand dollars from my 403b after quitting Northern RIARC back in 1997. I had to wait for a check to be sent out to me by mail. Years later, it was the same thing with my 401k from Symantec in 2009. I remember that too was Charles Schwab and I had to call them to ask for my money and the rep was giving me all kinds of hassle reminding me I'd have to pay taxes and penalties which I knew but since I'd been laid off, I really needed that money. Again, they had to mail me a paper check.
Surely though technology has caught up to these rickety old fashioned conservative bank folks, right? Well...
First I had to issue a sell order from the annuity I wanted to withdraw from so that it could be moved into the cash column of my Schwab account. Instantaneous right? Nope. Notice stated that it would take two business days.
Ended up, I got an email notification 24 hours after issuing my order letting me know it had been executed so I guess it only took one business day. Wow! How speedy.
Now that I had money as cash, I clicked on transfer money. The instructions asked me from which account to make a transfer from, I indicated my IRA account, then it asked me to which account do I want to set up transfer with an advisement that a non-Schwab bank account could only be set up online as a source of transferring money from it to my IRA; in other words to make deposits to the IRA account. Since I wanted it the other way around, I had to complete a form.
An eleven page form.
This question, that question, this question, that question, most of the questions didn't really apply and at least one of them that did regarding my personal checking account, they wanted me to void an actual paper check and attach it to the form, print the eleven pages out, and sign it. Frankly I'm surprised they didn't want me to get it notarized. SMH.
After I printed it all out, I noticed that there were alternate instructions for getting the form to them by way of the online message center on the website. So I chose that.
Oh and the estimated time it takes for the distribution to be deposited into my checking account? THREE WEEKS!!
The way the market is performing frankly, and knowing I'll have to go through this all over again the next time I take another distribution, I'm really tempted to just cash the whole thing out, put it into my 5% savings account and be done with it. But of course that would be mucho taxation and, of course, the other asshole bank being like a feral cat messing with an injured little mouse, Bank of America and their greedy, grubby paws, could pounce and take it all.
So thanks Mr. Schwab. I'll just wait patiently down here with the other huddled masses for my little, tiny crumb.
EDIT: It took eight days.