Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

tl;dr still waiting for things

The latest on that inherited IRA is that I got two email messages from Fidelity today, one saying that I needed to do something [unspecified] to transfer the money from BNY, and one saying specifically that BNY had told Fidelity that they, BNY, needed to talk to me.

So, I called BNY, and after various annoyances with their phone tree, talked to someone. He told me that they had no record yet of receiving the form I sent by next-day mail, but that if the form had arrived late Wednesday they might not be scanned until late today or even Monday. Also that once the form is scanned into the BNY system, it may take a few days before they actually transfer the money into my name, which would be necessary in order to move it to Fidelity.

So, I can (and probably will) call Monday to check that the form was in fact been received, but he thinks I should call later in the week, maybe Wednesday, maybe as late as Friday, and ask for my brand-new account number. Once I have that number, I have to fill out appropriate paperwork with Fidelity. *sigh*

I am both annoyed that even paying for next-day delivery, this is taking several days, and thinking that if I hadn’t paid for faster delivery I would be a few days further behind.

The man also said that once the funds are transferred, they will send me an acknowledgement by mail, including the new account number. However, waiting for that to arrive (rather than getting the information by phone) does not seem prudent, given the IRS deadline for the 2025 required minimum distribution.

After a bunch of back and forth, it appears that the reason Chase would provide a medallion signature guarantee for my brother, and not me, is that he's an executor of my mother's estate. (Mark and I both have accounts at Chase, which is part of what confused me.)

The banker at Chase suggested talking (again) to either Vanguard or TIAA and see if they will do this. She said she looked online and it said TIAA does provide these, and I've had an account with them for at least 30 years.

Also, Attitude's and my joint account at Chase is dormant, and to wake it up, one of us needs to go to a branch, talk to someone, say we want to take the account out of dormancy, and make at least a $1 deposit or withdrawal. And no, I can't pick up a deposit slip, take it to a teller, and make the trivial transaction, we would need to actually talk to someone. To keep it active, we will need to poke at it at least every 364 days. But doing this once would at least reset the clock of "inactive account, transfer funds to the state for safekeeping."

I talked to someone at Amalgamated Bank this morning, who told me what I would need to do to take my mother's name off a joint account, then suggested that I set up online banking and then transfer the money to my account at another bank. Setting up online banking on their website was straightforward, and then it popped up a verification step involving sending a text to a cell phone associated with the account. Entirely reasonable, but my phone number isn't on the account.

I called back, and talked to another helpful person. She told me how to add the number: send her an email with "attn: Cheryl" as the subject line, giving them my current phone number and attaching a copy of my ID. I did that, and got an "undeliverable" message from Postmaster@[bank], saying I wasn't authorized to relay messages through the server. So I called back, again, and spoke to someone who told me that oh, yes, it does that, but it does deliver the messages. I got her to check, and they had received my email, but Why?

This still feels like significantly less hassle than sending them a copy of my ID, and an original death certificate. That has to be done by paper mail, not email, because they want an "original" death certificate, which she promised they'd return. (At the moment, those originals are in either New Orleans or London, I'm in Boston, and my brother is on vacation in Ireland.)

Cattitude and I got up at 5:45 so he could pill Kaja, preparatory to her dental surgery. Both the pilling and the medical care went well, and she is on soft food only for 10-14 days. Therefore Molly is too, and we have to give them different treats than the usual dental Greenies. (Kaja will also be getting anti-inflammatories for a couple of days, and gabapentin for five.)

I got email from my brother about Mom's estate. He has done the necessary formwork so Vanguard can give us the money from her account there, where we are co-beneficiaries. His share is already in his account existing account. I tried setting an account up online, which apparently failed at the last minute, so I called and got a helpful person to walk me through the process again, step by step. I had gotten far enough earlier to create security questions, including some that I can actually remember my answers to, and haven't used repeatedly elsewhere. Separately, I need to talk to someone at Amalgamated Bank about the account there, a joint account with both our names on it. I hope they'll let me, as co-owner, close the account and transfer the money elsewhere, rather than sending them a copy of the death certificate, getting the account just in my name, and then closing it.

Mark also said he's thinking of going to London next month to sort through Mom's belongings, photos, and paperwork. So he wants to know whether I'm going as well, and if so, what dates worth for me. (Putting this here so I'm less likely to forget to talk to Cattitude and Adrian and then write back to Mark.)

After multiple attempts to get information about this alleged copay assistance program, I have paid the (high) copay for the Kesimpta, so a dose will be here tomorrow. This morning, I tried chatting with an agent on their website, and the site logged meout in mid-chat twice, and the third time the agent just wandered away after I asked a question and I eventually gave up and picked up the phone. That also took a few tries, before reaching the right department, and someone who could actually see the chat logs from earlier in the day.

The combination of foot-dragging and contradiction about the copay assistance program leads me to suspect that there is no team working on payment assistance, and they're just trying to delay filling prescriptions. The insurance company requires me to use this specific "specialty pharmacy," and they're part of the same corporation, so it may not be in their interest to fill the really expensive prescriptions, depending on how much of that high price would eventually go to the drug company, rather than transferring money internally between Aetna and CVS.

This morning's round of contradictions was agent 1 saying they had been waiting for an ICD10 code, but were now working on finding me help, and agent 2 saying they needed that information and would reach out to my doctor about it.

I'm posting this in part because I have gotten a bunch of things done in the last 24 hours, including financial stuff nobody will notice unless I mention it.

In a Discord conversation yesterday, which started with people snarking at Rudy Giuliani, someone said something about not just leaving money in a checking account. Now, I knew this already, but somehow last night that prompted me to go look at my online savings bank. It turns out that they now have a new kind/brand of savings account, with significantly better interest than my existing account. (I originally opened that account, ages ago, because at the time the interest rate was better than average interest.)

So, I told the bank website to open a shiny new savings account, and moved some money from the old savings account to the new one, then logged out and went to bed. This morning, I told it to pull some of the money I got from social security when they approved my claim from the checking account at my credit union to the new account. I'm thinking I will wait a couple of days, and move a larger sum, unless I have something specific else to do with it. It turned out, unsurprisingly, that the task wasn't difficult, once I found the executive function. (I usually don't have much executive function left late at midnight, even if I'm still awake.)

Also today I paid bills; did some PT; took out the trash and recycling; removed my somewhat battered Minuteman library card from my key chain before it broke; and made lunch for myself and Cattitude, and washed the lunch dishes, while Adrian was at the farmers market buying apples. (I can probably use the card indefinitely, but may not be able to replace it, because that library network doesn't include Boston.

Listing it like that confirms that yes, I've done a lot, both last night and today.

Mostly for my reference:

The lawyer called me this morning, and told me that there's a five-month waiting period for benefits between the date that they say I became disabled. That puts us in spring of 2022, so the retroactive lump sum will be about 28 months' benefits. His guess is that will be about $42,000, with a net of about $35,000 after the 20% for his fee.

It has been more than two years since the date they know/acknowledge I was disabled, so I am immediately eligible for Medicare. By default, they will enroll me, and take the premiums out of the monthly benefit payment. He recommends enrolling now, because if I wait they will charge more when I do start taking it, but emphasized that this isn't legal advice. So, one thing I/we need to do is check which of my doctors do or don't accept Medicare, and what limits there are on that.

Since I will be collecting these benefits immediately, I can wait until the maximum age for starting to take Social Security retirement benefits, maximizing my eventual monthly benefit from that.

Check whether doctors take Medicare (and if so, does it matter which plan?): primary care doctor does take at least some Medicare plans. To check: eye doctor, lung doctor, neurologist, psychologist [anything else I'm not thinking of].

Unrelatedly, I should call the MS nurse and ask whether I should keep the January appointment with the neuropsychologist, since that was originally intended to help support the disability appeal.

It took a few calls, but I have now spoken to the woman whose name and number were on the letter I got last week.

It turns out that what I need to mail them is: nothing. The online application is complete, and after looking at my earnings report, she said the last few years of freelance work, everything since 2014, don't count as "substantial gainful activity," so she doesn't need the 2021 tax return to tell her that last year's freelance income isn't "substantial gainful activity" either.

I think the process here is: tomorrow morning she will write a "work report" based on what I told her, about having stopped looking for full-time work because I realized I couldn't handle a full-time job, and what the Social Security Administration already knows about my work history. That goes to the local disability determination office, which assigns it to an examiner. The examiner will contact my doctors for medical records, which will then be looked at by a doctor or doctors who work for them.

Somewhere in there, I will probably get a call from an examiner, or a letter asking me to call them. They may want me to be examined by a doctor who works for Social Security, but when I said "fine, if I can keep my N95 mask on" the woman said I could ask for telemedicine.

I asked how long this was likely to take, and while she doesn't know exactly -- among other things, this may depend on how efficient three or four different medical offices are -- if I haven't heard by the end of May, I should call back.


For my reference: My contact is ( Read more... )

I got a lot done today, which is good, but when it was time to make dinner, I was running out of spoons and not sure it would work. But it did, and we had lamb patties and a salad, and another half pound of lamb is now in the freezer.

In the morning I stretched and exercised: I'd been letting that slide, and feeling it, so did all the hip and knee stretches both yesterday and today. Plus a half dozen of my PT-related exercises, and some crunches.

My new proofreading client, who I will call Janet because that's her name, and I exchanged some more email about how she would sending me a deposit before I start work. Bank of America, where she banks, offered to do a direct bank transfer, then asked for my mailing address, and when she gave them that they suddenly needed to know what kind of account the money would be going into: not just savings vs. checking, but specifically whether it's a regular or a money-market savings or checking account. At that point it looked like they were trying to throw up obstacles. So I took her other suggestion, of using Venmo. I only signed up for Venmo a few weeks ago and had been thinking of it as part of me dealing with the pandemic, because I signed up in order to pay for ice cream delivery. I hadn't expected to use it to receive money. It seems to work OK, although I don't understand why people want a money-transfer app with social media traits. "Seems" because the money she sent hasn't made it to my bank account yet, but they said it would take a day or two, unless I wanted to pay a fee for an instant transfer.

After lunch I took apart boxes, to put in the recycling. I cut up at least eight boxes, and slid the cardboard in at the edge of the bin, so after five or six boxes there seemed to still be as much room in the bin as when I started. The porch looks a lot less cluttered than it did this morning.

In between cutting up bocrd, I proofread an article for ACM queue, who have been sending me a little bit of work every other month since 2002.

Tomorrow I will take things a little easier.

I'm putting this here mostly to help myself remember. I just got an email from my credit union:.

a recent change in federal regulations affects the way you make your online and mobile deposits. Now, when you endorse your check (sign the back of the check you are depositing), you're also required to indicate in writing that you're depositing the check online or from a mobile phone (remotely).

This change applies to all financial institutions that accept online and mobile deposits. ...


Proper endorsement format for Mobile Deposit:
John Doe (your signature)
For BECU Mobile Deposit only

Proper endorsement format for Online Deposit:
John Doe (your signature)
For BECU Online Deposit only

What this Means to You
If you don't properly endorse the back of the check you're depositing, the check may be denied. Additionally, if your check is missing the proper endorsement, and it's deposited more than once, your account will be debited for the amount of the check. Further, you'll be liable for any resulting negative balance in your account, including NSF fees, regardless of circumstances surrounding the deposit(s).

I have been writing "For Deposit" above my signature; when I was putting the checks into an ATM, it was "For Deposit Only [newline] signature [newline] account number" but BECU accepts the mobile deposits even if I don't put the account number on the check.

My banking options are, in no particular order, to do things electronically; find a partner credit union that will let me make deposits through their ATM; or move at least some of my money to a credit union or bank that has branches here. It took me long enough to find a credit union that I was eligible for that I jumped at the opportunity when we moved to Washington, where there are far fewer restrictions on membership—BECU was open to any resident of Washington or Alaska, so I joined as soon as I had proof of residency,