Mistakes happen and customers need to be vigilant. When I retired I moved my Roth from Lincoln Financial to Vanguard. Instead of putting the funds in a Roth they put them in a traditional IRA.
I initially just verified that the funds had moved in the proper amount. A month or two later I noticed that the new Vanguard account title did not include the word Roth so I called and asked about it. The first person that I talked to told me that I must have made a mistake and that they did exactly what I asked them to do. I then requested to speak with a supervisor who agreed to check the correspondence used to transfer the funds. She acknowledged their error and corrected the problem. She told me it might take up to six weeks to straighten things out but it only took a week or so.
I am now hyper vigilant when making changes or executing transactions. The thing that worries me is that my wife is likely to outlive me and she is not comfortable managing investments and would most likely never have caught the error above. This would have had very costly tax consequences for her. She would eventually have paid tax twice on the amount transfered and would have been subject to taxes on gains in the traditional IRA that should have been tax exempt in the Roth.
I initially just verified that the funds had moved in the proper amount. A month or two later I noticed that the new Vanguard account title did not include the word Roth so I called and asked about it. The first person that I talked to told me that I must have made a mistake and that they did exactly what I asked them to do. I then requested to speak with a supervisor who agreed to check the correspondence used to transfer the funds. She acknowledged their error and corrected the problem. She told me it might take up to six weeks to straighten things out but it only took a week or so.
I am now hyper vigilant when making changes or executing transactions. The thing that worries me is that my wife is likely to outlive me and she is not comfortable managing investments and would most likely never have caught the error above. This would have had very costly tax consequences for her. She would eventually have paid tax twice on the amount transfered and would have been subject to taxes on gains in the traditional IRA that should have been tax exempt in the Roth.
Statistics: Posted by bikechuck — Sat Jun 08, 2024 5:25 pm