This Week’s Investing Update

Photo credit: Bilal Kamoon, CC BY 2.0.
Here’s where I am with all of my investments this week:
My HSA is doing exactly what it’s supposed to, which is great. I put a little more money in because I got another freelance paycheck, and as soon as my cash balance is above $50 it’ll automatically invest it in the Vanguard mutual fund I selected. (I love that my HSA doesn’t have mutual fund minimums. Getting that initial $3K — or even $1K — required to invest in some mutual funds is hard, and it’s enough to put people off investing.)
I also got an email from TIAA this morning letting me know that my rollover is in progress. I was expecting at least one more round of forms or clarifications, so that was a nice surprise!
A less-nice surprise was the letter I got from Vanguard asking me to verify my identity. I’d already been through the identity verification process with Vanguard, or at least I thought I had, but now they’ve put all of my accounts on lockdown until I can mail them a copy of my drivers license and a utility bill.
I called Vanguard to ask for clarification, and to confirm that if they received my rollover money from TIAA before they finished processing my drivers license and utility bill, they wouldn’t, like, lose the cash, and it was one of those deals where I didn’t even get to ask my question before the CSR put me on hold. For 12 minutes.
But it turns out that I do in fact have to mail copies of my identifying information to Vanguard, and no I can’t fax it, and yes they’re going to hang on to the money from my incoming TIAA rollover and my in-progress Roth IRA transfer until they get the identity thing worked out. (“No, we don’t send the assets back,” the CSR confirmed.)
So that’s my Do 1 Thing for the next 30 minutes.
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