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Chapter 1: What happens to your retirement savings when you leave a job?
Okay, so I'm embarrassed to admit this, but I think I might have money somewhere, maybe hundreds or thousands of dollars, that I have no idea how to access. When I was in my 20s, I didn't really think about retirement. That was a problem for future me. But now I am future me. I'm 35 years old, and I'm trying to figure out what happened to those retirement accounts for my early 20s.
My employers automatically enrolled me in them, or at least I think they did. I don't know. If I'm going to be honest, I can't even remember the name of the companies that managed my retirement accounts. One night not long ago while lying in bed, I spent like an hour digging into this, but because everything was saved under my old work emails, I couldn't figure it out.
And as I was going to sleep, I thought, surely I can't be the only one in this situation, right? So why don't I make an episode out of this? Maybe if I document my process, it'll encourage other people to do the same. But apparently, even turning it into a work assignment didn't really help.
After I pitched this to my team, days passed, inertia kicked back in, and soon enough, I found myself on a call with our producer, Alice, who was gently laying down the law.
You stalked me. Are there any resources you're coming across about who I should call? And what I was going to tell you is, I think... I think that me telling you who you should call kind of defeats the purpose of me figuring this out on my own.
Why do you keep putting this off? I just haven't been feeling great. And so the idea of having to do an administrative task feels really cumbersome.
Do you think part of the reason you've been putting this off is you're afraid that when you look at the account, there won't be any money there?
That's part of it, for sure. Where I'm like, yeah.
Okay.
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Chapter 2: How common is it for people to lose track of their retirement accounts?
This is Brendan. How can I help you?
Hi, Brendan. My name is Rima. I have a quick question about an over-retirement account.
And you have an account with TIAA?
Well, that's what I'm trying to figure out. I'm trying to see if I do have an account with you all.
I'm not seeing anything pop up for me, so I don't believe you have an account with us.
Oh, really? Do you know if I've ever had an account with you all?
No, or else we would have had an account for you with your social.
Okay. All right. Well, thanks. I appreciate it.
No problem. Well, thank you so much for calling TIAA. Have a great rest of your day.
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Chapter 3: Why is it so hard to manage retirement accounts?
And I knew what I was doing.
Yeah, you're literally an expert.
Yeah. So that was like the best case scenario. Two willing participants and a retirement researcher. And it was really challenging. So if you're facing more than that, a lot of people just don't do it. And so that's how you end up with, you know, even a decade ago, a third of people having more than three of these things sitting around.
Why was it hard for you and your wife to do it?
You know, I think it was just a lot of paperwork. I think that, like, it was five to ten pages of paperwork. It wasn't that it was so challenging as it was.
It's a chore. It's like a thing you have to do. It's a chore, exactly.
It's like any time you put a barrier in front of someone, you have the chance of losing them. And there were at least three different points where I was like, I'm just going to give up.
I'm not sure I just give up.
But we persevered and now all our money's in one place. So, but yeah, that's rare. It's very rare.
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Chapter 4: What are the options for rolling over retirement accounts?
I was 22. Did not know what I was doing. Did not look into it. I was automatically enrolled.
And the one you probably have like $2,000 or $3,000. And then if it was invested recently, it might be like maybe $6,000 or $7,000 than the one that was just for the year. The other one you said was, you know, a little longer. I was there for three years, yeah. So there, let's say $6,000. But that was more recent. Maybe they matched something with them. Maybe like $15,000. Maybe.
I mean, I'd be happy with that. The delusional part of my brain is like, what if I have hundreds of thousands? Obviously I don't.
Maybe you invested it all in like Bitcoin when it was a Santa thing and you're now, you can just retire right now.
Yeah, maybe. Maybe this is my last year of working. After talking with Jeff, I can't stop thinking about the millions of workers with retirement accounts just sitting there that are ignored or forgotten. I'm still on a mission to figure out what happened to mine. And I'll also look at why our brains love to avoid these kinds of tasks and how we can trick ourselves into doing them anyway.
That's after the break. Also, is there a money chore like this that you've been putting off or another money question keeping you up at night? We'd love to hear about it and maybe even try to help. Give us a call and leave a message at 347-RING-TIU and your call just might inspire our next This Week's Question. Welcome back to This is Uncomfortable. I'm Rima Grace.
This week, I'm trying to track down my old retirement accounts from my first two jobs in my early 20s, which led me to meet up with our producer, Alice Wilder, and start making some more calls. Because after digging through some old paperwork, I eventually tracked down the name of one of the retirement administrators I'm pretty sure I had an account with.
Welcome to the North Carolina retirement system.
Please enter the last four digits of your social security number, followed by the pound key.
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Chapter 5: How does procrastination affect financial tasks?
Yeah. I like that you use the phrase operating system because it makes me feel like it's detached from who I am. Like, oh, that's a separate entity that is controlling my life and it's not me anymore.
That's right. It doesn't mean there's something wrong with you specifically. It's something that's wrong with the way that we were all designed. But it could become a problem for you specifically. And so you've got to outsmart your operating system and figure out a workaround that's going to get you where you want to be.
But how much of it do you think comes down to us just not knowing the potential payoff? Earlier today, I was actually crunching the numbers and And it always, like when I actually sit down and do that, it always astonishes me a little. I'm like, wow, if I save $1,000 in 30 years, that could be $10,000. If I save $10,000 in 30 years, that could be $100,000.
Yeah, I think this is a separate issue, which is that people don't understand compound interest very well. And so they do not appreciate how hard it is to catch up. Even if you are saving at a higher rate later, starting early gives you this massive benefit because of compounding. And our brains are very confused by compounding.
We sort of assume processes are linear and that we can add them linearly and I can catch up because I'll just... do all the savings when I'm at my peak income, which I assume I'll reach in my 40s. But here in my 20s, I'm like, you know, I'm barely able to get enough together to go on a vacation. So this isn't the time to save.
But that's wrong because of compound interest and how massively beneficial it is to be putting even a little away early compared to more away later. So I do think that is also an issue.
When we think about there's a lot of unfortunately, unfortunately, when it comes to saving for retirement, there's a whole lot of human operating system features that are not working for us that are working against us.
Well, speaking of which, so then how do we get ourselves like what are some science backed ways we can overcome this kind of procrastination when it comes to our financial lives?
Also a great question. So there's a lot of different strategies that can be helpful here. Most of them boil down to trying to change the calculus of it's only going to have payoffs in the distant future. And even though I keep saying, oh yeah, tomorrow I'm going to get to that. Tomorrow I'm going to prioritize that. You've got to break that cycle.
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Chapter 6: What psychological strategies can help overcome procrastination?
The most extreme form of commitment device is literally saying you're going to fine yourself, right? So basically you need to create a contract that's like, I'm going to have to give $50 to a politician's campaign who I hate if I haven't done this by next Friday. And now here, there's a couple ways. One, there are literally websites, I have no affiliation with them, that will...
help you do this there's a website called stick s-t-i-c-k-k.com built by some economists um that will let you put money on the line choose a referee so someone who will hold you accountable and report to the site on whether you successfully rolled those over so someone who you know will be a truthful reporter uh who can check on you
And then, you know, they take your credit card and they have a list of charitable organizations you can say your money is going to go to if you fail. And P.S., they actually try to choose charities on either side of hot button topics because you kind of don't want a silver lining. So ideally, you should commit to sending your money somewhere that would really sting if you don't succeed.
That's insane.
Yeah.
And if you don't want to have a middle man, middle person type website involved, you can just do this yourself.
Do it with your friends.
Yeah, do it with your friends, do it with your family, whatever it is. But the idea there is what we know from research is sometimes we need... a nanny state kind of situation to get something done. And like, you can set that up for yourself.
But I can imagine it might make people, some people feel bad about themselves. Like, oh man, I have to resort to something like this in order to get a very basic task done.
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Chapter 7: How do we change our approach to financial chores?
And by the way, there's a reason that there's like an entire industry, right, of like financial advisors and health coaches and like all these kinds of people. In some ways, they're sort of like commitment devices. They're sort of like accountability partners. They're sort of like your buddy who you tandem goal pursue with. There's a lot of different hacks to help you.
If someone's still listening to this and is like, oh man, I should do this too. I should consolidate my 401ks or I should do this financial thing, but I'll get to it tomorrow. What would you tell them? I would tell them you won't get to it tomorrow, most likely.
She's going to call you out. Okay. You've probably said that before. So make it harder for yourself to procrastinate beyond tomorrow. How are you going to make sure you actually get to it tomorrow? Put it on your calendar. Tell somebody you're going to do it. Maybe get a friend to come over. Maybe schedule a Zoom with somebody. Someone in your life a bit like Rima's Alice.
So think about like, how do you set up a situation where failure tomorrow is not really an option because you've changed the calculus and it's no longer sort of cheap and easy to put it off another day.
Like Katie said, these kind of chores are much easier to do together. And I'd love to connect with you all and hear what challenges you're trying to tackle. Let me know over on Instagram and on TikTok at thisisuncomfortablepod. Okay, so let's go back to that phone call with the retirement administrator who put me on hold, the one with 90 callers ahead of me.
I did eventually get through to a human, and I am happy to report that I got some answers. Once I got off the phone with them, I called up our producer, Alice, to share the news.
Okay, Rima, did you do it? Did you move the money? How much money? Tell me everything.
Okay, so I have some answers. Okay. So this is for my WUNC North Carolina public radio account. So this was the second job I had in my early 20s. And I worked at this place for three years. Let me pull up actually a recording from my conversation that I had with a representative. Let me see.
All right. And so you said you wanted the total balance that is $10,461.32.
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Chapter 8: What did Rima discover about her old retirement accounts?
Sunrise Biscuits. Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
We'd love to hear your stories about discovering, rolling over, or I don't know, maybe being disappointed by old retirement accounts. You can call and leave us a voicemail at 347-RING-TIU. That's 347-746-4848. Or you can send us an email at uncomfortableatmarketplace.org.
Also, I should say there are now federal requirements that make it so more Americans are automatically getting enrolled into retirement accounts these days. So if you just started a new job, definitely look into that and check out how much you're depositing. Okay, before we go, real quick, it is time for our mailbag. We love getting voice messages and emails from y'all. We read all of them.
And sometimes your messages spark conversations among our team. And today, Alice has a good one that we want to get into.
I do, and it's very timely. So this comes from Holly Rich in Texas. Okay, she says, Let's talk taxes and how, as Americans, we seem to have a belief system that if you don't find a way to reduce your taxes, you're not being smart. Like, we've built cheating into the system." And yet, we all know our government has a big deficit, and we still want services to be provided.
But it's hard to see or feel the direct line between paying our taxes and how we benefit. And then there's the guilt about trying to pay less. This may be a me thing, but I make around $180,000 a year as a single mom. I'm not a billionaire, but I'm also not struggling. I feel a social obligation to help those who need more services and breaks, which I do through volunteering and donating.
Okay, Reema, what is your reaction to that?
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