Access Time

In the Chris Martenson self assesment there is a question which is roughly like this: "How much time do you need to access, i.e. get a hold of, your money? Please measure in hours." What do you think? I conservatively figured that 3 days would be a good estimate. I was wrong. Look at my current experience.

Since I am more and more convinced that the crisis will be long term and that the dollar will lose it value short as well as long term, I have reached the conclusion to sell off my private pension plan, i.e. my IRA account. I pay 10% penalty and taxes now for early withdrawal but I figure it will be better to lose some money now than seeing a lot of devaluation over the next decade. My IRA account consisted of shares of XLE. So, last Friday I sold all shares I owned. For four days my account said "cash not available for withdrawal, awaiting settlement of sales". Only today Wednesday, on the fifth day after executing the sale, the cash was available for withdrawal. But now the next surprise occured. The complete amount of the cash cannot be transferred because there is an upper limit implemented by the financial institution. And finally, even the reduced amount could not be transferred because the web site continuously returned an error.

By now it is clear, it will take me more than a week to actually get a hold of the money. The story continues and I will update it as it evolves. But I have the feeling that several phone calls and several days tracking the issue are required to actually resolve it.