I finally got around to moving money from my old 401k to an IRA last week. I had to redeclare my beneficiaries, and I was surprised that one could choose stuff like “TO MY SPOUSE WHO SURVIVES ME” or “TO MY CHILDREN WHO SURVIVE ME”. I always had to give names, SSNs, birthdates, and the like; I presume for legal reasons. However, I guess laws have changed, and upon wading through the fine print, it is very specific on how money is discharged given the apparent non-specific beneficiaries given above. Maybe a lot of people got divorced and remarried and whatever and they neglected to update their accounts (oops!) leaving annoyed heirs.
Anyways, I chose “TO MY SPOUSE WHO SURVIVES ME” because it involved clicking on a radio button rather than typing in Amanda’s data. I thought Amanda might be amused/have some thoughts on all this, so I mentioned it to her on our daily phone call from New Mexico. She said, “I want my name on it!”. See, I knew she would have thoughts about it.
I just got the confirmation in the mail, so I guess I can go ahead and actually put her name down. I should move my other IRA from my old 3D/Eye days into this account. I doesn’t have all that much in it though, and I think its performance over the last ten years is 0%. Ya, that’s not good. Maybe I will just withdraw the money, eat the penalties, and take a trip to Hawaii. Although after taxes and penalties, we might have have enough for that.