A couple years ago, I switched jobs and rolled the 401k into a newly created IRA. Somehow during all of that, the financial planner we used switched our account so that instead of putting $300/month into three different mutual funds, we have been putting $200/month into two different funds in that IRA and another $100/month into a normal mutual fund.

In the grand scheme of things, that’s not such a horrible situation. It is money we planned on saving and having it saved is just fine.

BUT, we are pregnant again and expecting in October. It would be really nice to have that money in the mutual funds that we thought we were investing in instead of the IRAs that we cannot touch without some pretty stiff tax penalties. My wife works part time and will not be eligible for any money during the time she will take off after the baby is born (There may be some options that we have to look into but for now we are expecting no magic outside money to appear).

Now I have to contact the financial planner to get that switched so we can get as much as possible saved where we can use it later this year.

Here are two important lessons that I learned.

  • You have to read all of those financial statements carefully even if you don’t think that you are changing anything.
  • Our financial planner is not my favorite person right now.

I am fully aware that I should have known about this situation months ago and I do accept the responsibility of not noticing it. But it still sucks. I will definitely mark this one down as a bad financial decision.