It is no secret that the love of my life celebrated birthday Number 70 last September. That means she turns 70-1/2 in 2009, and that means she is required by the IRS to begin making minimum withdrawals from her IRA (Individual Retirement Account). She also considers anything related to the IRS (including IRA's, LTCG's, AMT's, AGI, and so forth) to be exclusively my domain. So I initiated the withdrawal process today by calling our investment adviser at BAIS (Banc of America Investment Services). Yes, it's now Banc, not Bank, and I don't know when or why. She was not in (never is), but gave me a voice message telling me to ring up Customer Service. There a taped message asked me to enter Maureen's account number. I did. Another taped message advised me that it could take up to four minutes for a live human to pick up. The elevator music was not too bad, but it was not memorable, either. About 40 seconds later, a young-sounding man with a eastern seaboard accent greeted me and asked how he could help me today. Friendly guy. I told him and gave him all the account numbers. He asked if my wife was nearby. He needed to talk to her to verify that she was really who I said she was. She was in the back room doing ironing. So she and this young man talked for awhile, and then Maureen handed the phone back to me to work out the details of the transaction. Then the guy said he'd like to speak to Maureen again to get her approval for all this.
Now comes the good part. When they were done, I guess he asked her if there was anything else he could do for her today. I suppose I would have said, "No, thank you" or something like that. My wife said, "You could come and finish my ironing." I'll bet dollars to doughnuts he's never had a response like that! Then I guess he said he'd love to do that, but he'd have to come all the way across the country. Maureen asked him where he was. He said, "Boston." She said, "Oh, I'll bet its a lot colder where you are than where we are." He agreed, and told her he loved Santa Barbara ... was married there, in fact. "Where?" she asked. "At a ranch on Highway 154," he answered. She said she knew where the highway was, but not the ranch.
What this means is ... I have the world's friendliest person for my wife. She makes anyone, even a BAIS customer service representative who is closing out her IRA, feel completely at ease. Most of the time she can also learn how she is related to the person in about three minutes. It happens all the time. She is wonderful!
