Online Statements

Some of our statements we get online. While it would seem like it would be much easier to do things online, it is actually a huge pain.

Because of all the security on these sites, in order to access the online statements, we have to have an account set up for us. To get this account, we have to ask the plan administrator to ask the statements company, Like Morgan Stanley, to set it up. All this can take days to set up, which means we have to put work for that plan aside for a while.

Once we have an account, a password must then be created for us. The company gives the password to the plan administrator, then the administrator gives the password to us. However, these passwords expire within a few hours of being created if they are not used to log in. The first 3 times we got passwords, too much time must have passed, because we were unable to log in with it. By the time we finally got the password to work, we hours had passed.

And when we finally did log in, there was a SECURITY QUESTION! So we had to email the plan administrator to find out what town she was born in so we could finally access these plans and get going with the work we had to do.

All in all, I much prefer having physical statements to online statements. It takes a long time to sort them all, but it's much less frustrating than dealing with all the excess security. Sorry trees. You lose this round.