"I have been but little in," said Ninian hastily...

Ooooh, I love crossing things off the "damn, have I still not done that?" list.

Long, long ago before the dawn of time, I had a 401(k) fund; I left the company I worked for, and I went to work for a nonprofit that had a different sort of fund, so my old employer-linked account had to become an IRA. The small local firm that managed it got eaten by a big company, then they got eaten by a larger one, and so on. The latest "manager" of my fund (some guy in Utah who's never met me) persuaded me, against my better judgement, to cash out my old funds, which he swore had all sunk their losses in the recession and would never recover, and invest the diminished total in new funds he would suggest.

Of course, the new funds performed badly, and the old ones started recovering. *He* had his commission, so he didn't care. Well, my current 401(k) is handled by a different company, and it has performed very well so, in a move to try and simplify things, I moved the money from bad, evil giant investment firm to, well, OK, probably just as evil giant investment firm, but one that has *made* thousands of dollars for me, not lost thousands. So screw you, stupid guy who gave me bad investment advice; you're not getting any more martinis off commissions on my retirement.

And the best part is, they make sure to get me to name beneficiaries. Which is like (IMO) giving people a huge present. And I love giving people presents. So now if I get hit by a bus tomorrow, several people I dearly love with have a bit more of the old pretty polly to be getting on with. Which is a bit of choodessny radotsy, if you like.

Sweet. I was thinking of paying off my car loan, so I checked with CarMax to see what the current remaining amount id. Turns out it's about $1,000 less than I was guessing. And it's much lower than the current blue book value of the car. It wouldn't save any money to pay it off, obviously, but it would be nice to decrease my monthly outflow, even if it's only cosmetic (since the over should then go to paying back my savings account for paying off the car...)

Woo! First paycheck with my new raise in it! Fun! Now to send sme of it off to the Bank of the Black Monks of St. Herod ('Banking with a Smile and a Stab') before the baby-eating Bishop of Bath and Wells arrives to pay me a visit...