I wanted to make a warning post in case this can help anyone else who's at risk of getting burned by Vanguard and/or Columbia University.
I have a Vanguard Institutional Target Retirement 2050 Fund through Columbia University, which I stopped contributing to 7 years ago. Two years ago I lost 60% of my balance because I was only 40% vested. I recently received a letter from Vanguard saying that I needed to rollover the money in my account to a new one (not clear why, but whatever). When I started the rollover process on their website I saw that only 40% of my balance was being included in the rollover. I called Vanguard and they told me I was only 40% vested. I told them that they had already taken their 60% two years ago. After many phone calls to both Vanguard and Columbia, I was finally told that they "missed" a "backend error" and that I was in fact fully vested, and my full balance would roll over. I asked if they would send me an email explaining what had happened and they refused.
I think it's worth mentioning that if I hadn't opened my mail and seen that I needed to start the rollover process, Vanguard would have done this for me automatically. And in that case, poof... 60% of my money would have been gone. I have no way of knowing how widespread this "error" is, or if it's more on Columbia or Vanguard, but please, if you have a Vanguard retirement fund that you're not fully vested in, double check that they aren't trying to take their percentage more than once.
Submitted September 23, 2021 at 11:10AM by Tony__the__Shrimp https://ift.tt/3AAWj9X
