So, as previously established, I got a new job a few months ago. It's still going well and still enjoyable. Anyway, one of the things I did when I left my previous employer was transfer my retirement account from their plan to my own, the master account where I pool the various 401(k)s and what-not from all the other places I've worked. I basically drained the old account and dumped it in just like all the others, no big deal — although, since dropping it in the wrong place could have severe tax consequences, it always gives me the odd feeling I'm transporting a nuclear weapon. But it transferred over, no problem, and I forgot about it. So imagine my surprise when I got a statement from the old dead account in the mail yesterday.
After looking at the envelope for a few seconds I decided it was probably the "final statement" confirming that the account was empty. I opened it up anyway, expecting to head straight to the shredder with it. No, it was definitely an account statement. And it showed I still had a balance: a whopping 49 cents.
I laughed, of course. How could I not? The statement was sent with first class postage, not bulk rate or any of that fancy stuff, which means it cost them at least 44 cents just to mail the envelope to me. And though I'm sure it's a mostly — if not entirely — automated process to adjust the balance as the market fluctuates, and then print up the statements and mail them out to everyone, it's still got to cost them a little bit of money to make all these things keep happening. Somebody has to service all those machines when they break, for example.
By the time I get the next statement, three months from now, the total cost of sending me statements on the almost empty account will exceed the account's balance. This, my friends, is what's wrong with America.
And you know what? I'm leaving that 49 cents in there. And if it disappears, I'm going to bitch. Not over the fact that I personally lost 49 cents, mind you — I've probably found more than 49 cents in loose change on the sidewalk this year. Rather, I will bitch over the principle of the thing. If they have, let's say, a million customers, and they skim 49 cents from each one, that's $490,000. Suddenly it's real money, and somebody gets a nice long vacation in the Turks and Caicos. Hey, where's my nice long vacation in the Turks and Caicos? Sure, maybe I can only afford something from the cheap menu at Taco Bell with that 49 cents, but better me than the Wall Street fat cats.
"This sounds familiar."
"Yeah, they did this in Superman III."
This isn't the first "interesting math" I've seen tied to an automated account. I used to have a dependent care account where they took some money out of my check each payday and set it aside, then after I paid the daycare (or after-school program as the case may be), I'd do some paperwork and get a check in return from that account. Although on paper it sounds like a lot of work for nothing, that amount wasn't taxable — and my employer threw in a little extra too, so really it was like a guaranteed investment. And at the end of every year I'd make sure to drain the account because it was one of those "use it or lose it" deals... and every year, there was always a minuscule amount left over I couldn't seem to get my hands on — fifteen cents here, a quarter there. One year it was almost a dollar. That was the year I went to payroll to ask about it, because hey, that's a five layer burrito. After much hemming and hawing, I was told it must be a rounding error, and got one of those "this really isn't worth pursuing any further" looks.
Well, sure it is. Some fat cat's sitting down in the Turks and Caicos eating all our burritos!