Blog on the Lillypad
Wednesday, September 29, 2004
 | Rubles, bills, shekels and such
What a day. I want to keep my new readers informed with their intro to Fundamentalism. The influx of readers from connexion.com and benediction has surprised and pleased me. And thanks for the e-mail. I want to explain more about that phenomenon known as American Christian Fundamentalism, but it's almost time for bed. You can always trot over to the FFF. I think the Farris boys are still giving their demonstration of Fundamentalist pastoral dignity. |
But today, apart from more changes requested by our client (which requires new documentation and new validation testing, as our software must meet stringent FDA requirements for electronic data storage and retrieval), I also had to transfer an old 401 K.
Much to my surprise, my current company doesn't do rollovers from old 401 K's! For a moment I nearly panicked. Then my team lead, Rick, told me about Vanguard. So after I got home I looked them up on the web, did a lot of research, and called them. I set up an account with them and then called the company that is still holding my old 401K.
Well, as it turns out, *they* said I could keep the money with them in a new IRA. That offer had not been clear in their letter, but I suppose there's a law that they cannot try to claim a preference in service. First they have to tell me all the options of what I can do with the old 401 K.
Anyway, I talked with them for a while. They run the Oppenheimer Funds, and they are very professional. But Vanguard is just less expensive in terms of custodian costs.
The lady at Vanguard tried to find a way I could invest in Pharmaceuticals, which is where I think the best returns lie, but the asset allocations ("funds" I think they are called) that invest in Pharma require more of a baseline investment than what I have. So after a fairly long search with her I settled on a couple of more traditional fund choices that I have to narrow further. For the moment, the money will go into a money market account with Vanguard until I make up my mind.
The entire search for what to do with my old 401 K took a few hours. I finally got my dinner, decided against preparing lunch for tomorrow, and am going to bed. Stay tuned for more adventures.
