A bit less of a slacker

I finally got off my ass and finished moving over my teaching retirement money.

I asked them to cut me a check back in February so that I could do a rollover into an IRA. Well, turns out you can only rollover into a traditional IRA, so I got two accounts set up (traditional and Roth) and stalled, and stalled, then moved into the house, then stalled some more…

Ah, life. It happens. And the check is chump change in the grand scheme of things, really… Blah, blah, inertia.

I’m appreciating a new, larger salary now, though, and have located my inner “gazelle” (although it’s more like a puppy, really) again for debt reduction/financial smartness/etc. I’m not going to be regularly investing in retirement yet (go away, student loans!), but I can at least get this little bit into a mutual fund of my picking.

So about three weekends ago, I finally deposited the check. Of course, you have to hurry and deposit the money in the IRA before the g-man thinks you’re keeping it for yourself. So I did so promptly. *woof*

Then I researched funds, and pick four (large, mid, small, internat’l) that should give me nice returns in the long run and have excellent Morningstar/Lipper/etc. ratings. So now I’m ready to invest, but I’m still in the damn traditional IRA. Who knows what would happen with withholding if all the assets were locked up.

Another week, and I roll it over into the Roth. Except that since they withhold for taxes, I’m short on the minimum initial investment. Deposit money… wait a business day. I’m even coming in later to work than normal so that I can be online at 08:00 to see if the rollover’s done and the funds are in. Silly, I know. But this is my first “adult” investment — I played around with individual stocks back in high school, but didn’t have much to invest and pooh-poohed mutual funds.

But this morning, finally, the funds were available and I put in an order for my first mutual fund (the one with the highest long-term returns, of course, since it may be as long as a year and some months before I add another to the portfolio). I want to check my account every 5 minutes to see if it’s gone through, but it probably won’t before 15:30.