The state of Florida’s investment plan retirement management company, Ernst & Young, really sucks. (It’s useful to note that CitiStreet is involved and sucks, too.) Some of that might simply be silly Florida laws, but it is nonetheless annoying. My goal is simple: rescue my retirement funds from the sadly inept options of the FRS Investment Plan and transfer them to a FirstTrade account. Should be simple, no?

Hardly. First, I had to deal with the never ending incompetence of the University of Florida. Ernst & Young’s information indicated I still worked for the University. The University of Florida failed to discover I was no longer an employee, so calls to different departments and the faxing of a form was necessary to ensure their records refected I was no longer an employee of the state. Why do I have to do your housekeeping for you, UF?

And that wasn’t the first of the ineptness to rear its ugly heard. Earlier I had to battle over a letter of coverage to continue my health insurance, as the University of Florida thought I was still employed there, wasting tax payer dollars on health insurance I wasn’t even supposed to still have! Or perhaps it is simply the ineptness of the state of Florida. In either case, a call to Blue Cross, then to the state’s own specially managed Blue Cross offices, and finally down the chain to the benefits department at the University of Florida lead to… no resolution at all. I resolved the issue via a different route.

Amusingly, I did not continue to receive a pay cheque, which I would have preferred over dealing with all this nonsense. But back to Ernst & Young.

It’s not possible to have your own money pulled, but rather you must provide Ernst & Young with the account number of the target institution to which they write a cheque, mailed to you. Then, you can forward that off to an account with an investment management company that isn’t completely lame.

Sadly, however, it isn’t possible to obtain a change of address without having a form notarized to the effect that your address has changed. So, to ensure my money isn’t mailed to a dead address, I have to have a form notarized. It’s extremely laughable when, after calling Ernst & Young via a MyFRS bounce phone number — the fact that there’s no direct number escapes me — you’re asked for your PIN twice, but you can’t change your address on file on the phone. You also can’t change it online, but you could, were you to obtain a state employee’s social security number and PIN, screw with the portfolio allocation. But, that’s not enough to do something as mindbogglingly simple as change your address!

Please. Make. The. Incompetence. Stop.

I’ll be so glad when my money is someplace that isn’t inept, incompetent, and lame.