Even though there’s only two of us here at work (well, actually our first of two interns started yesterday… but they only work 20 hours a week), our acting CEO has asked if we want him to set up a 401k.  I’d already gotten the ball rolling on a Roth IRA over at Zecco (paperwork filed at least), so unless he implements some sort of match program I guess I’ll just stick with that.  In the meantime, I thought I’d give my first impressions of Zecco.

The sign-up process is a major chore.  I’ve never done it at another broker, so I don’t know if it’s this bad everywhere or this is a “you get what you pay for” scenario.  I actually filled out all the paperwork back in August, but I never got around to mailing it off and faxing them my info (yes, MAIL and FAX–I didn’t realize anyone still used either).  I got a little more motivated last week, so I checked back in with them.  Because I hadn’t mailed my paperwork in by their 30 day deadline, I had to fill everything out again from scratch–there was no record anywhere of the application I’d previously filled out.

Once I got everything filled out, I headed over to Fedex/Kinkos, figuring I could make copies of my driver’s license, fax them the sheets they required, and mail everything in one stop.  No such luck.  Their mailing address for paperwork is a P.O. Box, so after standing in line for half an hour (December, go figure), they told me I’d have to take it to the post office.  After standing in line again at the post office, I finally had everything sent off properly.

I got the email saying the account had been a few days later–and that I could go to the site and log on using a combination of random personal info and the last 4 digits of my account number.  I tried to do so, but I didn’t actually have an account number yet.  When logging on to their site, it just said “Roth IRA–Account set up in minutes.”  It said that for a few days.  After it finally went through, I was able to log in and take a look at their trading platform.  In a word: ugly.  It looks like it was designed by programmers, with no real care paid to user experience.  I’ll hold further comment on it until I’ve actually used it some (though if the ACH-setup interface is any indication, it’s going to be a major chore).

Then my next issue: management fees.  Somewhere in the paperwork I filled out, I remember reading  that they charge you $30 a year to manage your retirement account (though, as far as I can tell, it’s still up to me to make all my own trades and pay trading fees of $4.50 until my balance hits $2500).  The yearly fee hits in February, and if you fund your account after February they charge you immediately.  It’s now December.  I called their customer support (and, to their credit, actually got a real person within 5 minutes) and asked if this fee was pro-rated or I was really going to be charged $30 so they could manage the couple of hundred or so dollars I’m likely to put in before February.  Their response: full $30.  I asked them if it was a specific date in February (I’d hate to put money in Feb 1st only to get charged again Feb 10th) or if I could safely put money into the account any time in the month.  He didn’t know.  He said it was usually a certain week in February, so if I wanted to be absolutely sure it was best to wait until March 1st.
So I’ve got a Roth IRA now.  I’m just not going to put any money into it until March. That’s not so bad, I guess.  I’ll just have to do a good job of mentally earmarking money in my checking account as “IRA money” and not “shiny new toy” money.  The game I mentioned in my Thanksgiving post got a really great sponsorship offer, so once I polish it up to their specs and finalize the deal I should have a pretty nice chunk of change to act as seed money (though I still don’t see myself maxing it out for 2007).