Gather ’round for a sad tale of a fool and money that were too-soon parted. Yes, me and mine.

A year ago, I started a new job and signed up for the company stock purchase plan. Seemed like a good idea at the time to save money. The stock had a decent P/E ratio, the company was reasonably solid as much as any company in that industry was, and the stock paid dividens. I’m not a market expert but I knew what I was getting into. Thinking myself a prudent and pragmatic investor, I elected to have a certain amount of money automatically deducted from my paycheck to go towards the stock purchase.

This is basically a dollar-cost averaging approach to investing. Yes, the stock price may go up, down or sideways from one paycheck to the next, but because I’m always investing the same amount, sometimes I’m paying a little more for the stock, and sometimes I’m paying less. In the long run, in theory, one still comes out ahead, assuming the stock appreciates over time. Plus, the dividens – which is like a form of earning interest – go towards buying more stock, so it eventually compounds in value. Sounds good, right? Automatic investment, planning ahead, savings discipline made easy, yaddah-yah.

One Year Later…. *scene change to a dark and stormy night, thunder rolling, lightning flashing, with ominous music suddenly blaring certain doom…DAAA DA DAAAAAH!!*

I decided to sell 1/2 of my company stocks because the market was getting bad and my own personal threshold for “when to sell” was breached. Ya see, I always establish a bottom price tolerance in my mind when I buy a stock. I won’t blindly hang on to something forever in hopes it will recover or be worth more despite all odds. My risk tolerance for this stock was getting too close to that margin, so I sold half of it. The transaction executed real-time and I got my check in the mail in about four days. Which was good, because I was putting it towards my property taxes, which were due too soon and I’ve struggled with getting the upper hand on them.

Anyway, I watched the market value of this stock immediately rise a couple days thereafter, just to piss me off, and for awhile I thought myself too rash. But then it started to fall. And fall. It dropped like a fucking rock, pardon my language, but there’s no other way to say it when you’re watching the hard-earned paycheck dollars that you invested, become worthless before your eyes in a matter of hours.

I waited another day for a “lift.” As I’d hoped, the stock crept back up a few bucks after the big sell-off of the day before, and I pounced on the chance to cut my losses. I sold the rest of the stock, using the exact same employee online web account that I’d used flawlessly just two weeks ago.

Imagine my surprise, when it took several days later for me to receive a check in the mail, and the check was for a whopping $17.31. I was expecting the check to be closer to $300, based on the market value when I sold it. The $17.31 was “leftover” from dividends that accured. The rest of my money was missing in action.

Found out my company had quietly changed a few things about how the employee stock purchase plan is handled. In that two week timespan from my first sell transaction to my second, they changed the administration of the plan to an outside agency.

So when I hit “sell”, instead of sending me a check, they sent a “set up broker account” order to the new outside broker agency.

This was not conducted in real time, either. The stock was worth $25.00 dollars a share when I executed the sale. When my employer sent the transaction to the outside agency, at the “close of business”, whenever the hell that is, the stock was below $20.00 a share. Also, the stock wasn’t actually “sold” in their eyes. The value continued to plummet. Like, not just a rock, but like a falling anvil.

Worse yet, when the outside agency set up my account, it became immediately subject to their brokerage fees. By the time I tracked down where the hell my money was – the stock was down below $14.00 a share. If I wanted to sell now, I’d get a much smaller check, PLUS they would be deducting their broker services fee – around $40 – and then to add insult to injury, the would also deduct three cents per share commission for every share I ordered sold.

Oh, and the sale wouldn’t be done in real time, either. I was told that if I ordered a sale before noon, then it MIGHT execute at the “close of business” the same day, OR maybe the close of business the next day, and whatever the sale price was when they actually got around to the transaction, would apply.

I’m still feeling sore in the posterior from the screwing I just took. Ultimately, I decided to leave the tattered remains of my stock purchase plan in the outside broker account instead of selling it. I’d get so little out of it now, it’s not worth choking down the fee.

Which has also screwed my budget this month. The property taxes cost far more than $300, but the point is this stock money coulda taken care of utilities or something and left me more cash flow.

The real moral to this story, is…the rules of the game can change without warning. I’m not a complete novice when it comes to investing, but I never saw this coming. I can only speculate that my employer – who’s stock value has been battered like so many other companies in this market – was looking for a way to stop the stampede to the exits whatever way it could. By making the employee stock sale transactions a complete pain in the ass, as well as making them expensive, they’ve discouraged sales.

Have I mentioned, I also have to submit the sale order in writing to the outside brokerage? Oh, I can send a fax. What do you think the odds are of them acknowledging my fax the same day I send it, or finding it all ?

There was one last indignity to all this. A few weeks ago when I guessed the company stock was going to head south, I stopped the purchase of any new stock. I canceled the payroll deductions.

Just got paid recently and guess what. I’m the proud owner of three more shares of company stock. I don’t want any more shares of this toliet paper, I want the cash back in my paycheck where it can put gas in the car or buy some groceries. @#$&*@!!!!

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 25th, 2009 at 5:51 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.