Well Bank of America has a rewards program where if you have $20,000 there or at Merrill Lynch you can get some cool extra benefits on credit cards and some free trades and accounts (btw, this is not a recommendation, I am just trying it out now). I have been looking at doing this for quite some time and decided to give it a shot. Little did I know I would be descending into the dark underbelly of moving funds. Hopefully as I go though this it can help someone else not make my time consuming mistakes.
I had a couple of accounts at Fidelity I wanted to move and I am pretty savvy so I figured how hard could it be… some internet searches and looking around the Fidelity site and I was left with a form that would get a check mailed to me that I would have to put in a new IRA before the time ran out and I owed taxes. This did not seem right so a chat with the Fidelity reps that lasted 20 minutes… took me back to the same form.
I graduated to a call from there and was told the trade would have to be initiated from Merrill Lynch to make it automated between them like I wanted. Makes sense, not a big issue other than it should have been easier to find this answer (it’s like they don’t want you moving your money out of their hands). Decided to make an appointment and have someone at Merrill Lynch walk me through things. It’s free so why not.
Well, the representative was friendly and told me we’d set up the accounts and I could come back to start the transfer after the accounts here created. Satisfied with my ability to figure things out I headed home. The accounts required an online signature I could not do in the office as their iPad was missing but no big deal.
I headed home and opened email one and worked my way through the questions, signed and created the login. Awesome, off to account two! Wait, the link requires making a new login again, but it can’t because it’s tied to the email and there is already an account with that email, but it can not use an existing account it needs a new one. An online chat later I just delete the other email and self create the new account online. Success (and a little shame that I just did not do this myself as it was super simple)! Now to wait for the meeting in a week to try the transfer.
A week later I head back into the Bank of America branch where my next meeting is. I have my new zero balance accounts at Merrill Lynch just waiting for some stocks, and a statement with all my Fidelity info (I had taken this last time too). Issue one, the representative realizes I had funds that were Fidelity specific in one account. I was told the online form he had did not support that and I needed to sell those before the move. So now the representative is calling Fidelity then passing me the phone to request the sale while the other transfer is set up.
More to come but the end is NOT in sight.
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