Things designed to be complicated, 401k/Roth/IRA rollovers

[Bateluer]

Trying to figure out how to fill out the paperwork to rollover my 401k from my old employer to the new employer. Seems needlessly complicated, with both the relinquishing financial carrier and the receiving carrier deliberating obfuscating information the other needs.

I've managed to get the relinquishing carrier to provide a check for the value of the account, in accordance with the instructions provided by the receiving carrier, but they want a full street address and phone number of the relinquishing carrier, as well as a contract number, none of which is on the check they provided. There's a PO Box address, but the receiving carrier's documents specifically say no PO Boxes.

Cripes, this is 2010, all of this should be done online in a matter of minutes, not weeks via snail mail. This crap is why a substantial chunk of my investments are still in a holding pattern with the military TSP, because they don't provide any documentation or instructions to easily rollover the TSP account into a civilian/private retirement account.

 

[DaWhim]

i rolled it over to an independent discounted brokerage.

 

[a123456]

i rolled it over to an independent discounted brokerage.

I pretty much did the same thing before with an 3rd party independent brokerage. They just required my account information on the first account and a recent statement to prove that I owned the account. I didn't have to contact the first bank at all since the receiver just pulled the funds out.

 

[alrocky]

I would've thought you'd want to keep your ole Thrift Savings Account open. Hard to beat those dirt cheap expense ratios.