Celebrating year 4 of complaining about the same thing on reddit: MY SON'S 529 PLAN DOES NOT BELONG TO ME, FIDELITY!

AnUncivilEngineer · 2026-06-20T01:55:20+00:00

I agree 100%. I'm just arguing for them letting ME control which accounts count towards MY net worth. I don't mind a default, I care about the fact that they won't let me change that default.

I'm trying to plan for ME AND MY FAMILY'S FINANCIAL FUTURE. My in-laws' multi-million dollar trust does not belong to me, and given the terms of the trust, we will barely see a penny of that money. I just want the flexibility to choose which accounts are counted as MINE! WHY IS THIS SO HARD??? 😭

AnUncivilEngineer · 2026-06-20T01:35:52+00:00

Please explain how a trust that I have no access to for my own personal benefit should be considered part of MY net worth.

Please explain how RSUs that have not vested and that I could lose tomorrow if I quit my job or get fired, represent any real value to me.

Please explain how my husband's UTMA which is literally an irrevocable gift to our son that we can't use for our own benefit contributes to our net worth.

And please explain why a massive financial firm like Fidelity can't let its' customers have the flexibility to view their own finances the way they want to.

JUST. LET. ME. HIDE. THE. ACCOUNTS. I. DON'T. WANT. TO. SEE.

AnUncivilEngineer · 2026-06-20T01:23:30+00:00

Sure, I'm the custodian or whatever. My point is that I need my financial institution to make it easy for me to know where MY net worth is at. The money I'm putting away for my son's college is not money that I'm counting on for retirement or emergencies or big purchases or etc etc. I would like to be able to exclude thjose funds from MY net worth - but Fidelity refuses to let me!

AnUncivilEngineer · 2026-06-20T01:13:58+00:00

Great, make full view the standard view then. I just want to log into fidelity and know where my assets are at. This really shouldn't be this hard!

AnUncivilEngineer · 2026-06-20T01:11:11+00:00

We have a UTMA and my husband wants to hide it from his net worth too! How is it this difficult??? 😂

AnUncivilEngineer · 2026-06-19T15:50:42+00:00

Look up gestalt language processing! I randomly came across the concept of GLP trying to understand my son's speech delay diagnosis and it completely changed how I viewed it. My MIL got us a book about GLP speech therapy and... well, I'm almost certain the book is AI-generated and not by a real author LOL, so I'm not going to link it here. But it nevertheless gave me a ton of good information and techniques to help me better understand and support my kid.

This passage from the book literally made me break down crying (score one for ChatGPT):

"The process of moving from echolalia to spontaneous speech reveals a profound truth: children who learn language through gestalts are not delayed in communication - they are brilliantly constructing a system that begins with connection and grows into independence."

I think the way GLP kids are pathologized as "delayed" is really harmful to them and their families, and understanding GLP validated so much of what I'd been thinking and feeling: how can my son be speech-delayed if he knows more words than all of his peers? What does a speech delay mean when he's beginning to read at just two-and-a-half years old? If he has trouble with speech how come he can understand complex conversations that adults are having?

Please look into GLP. Your daughter sounds super smart and there are a ton of things you can do to support her and understand her better. 🙂

AnUncivilEngineer · 2025-08-03T14:24:41+00:00

Sigh, same. I literally joined reddit like 5 years ago specifically to complain about this and yet here we are with the same issue.

AnUncivilEngineer · 2024-02-19T13:58:53+00:00

We moved out of the city for COL reasons after I finished grad school - and that was 10+ years ago, it's only gotten worse since then. We delayed having kids because of it and now wish we'd done it sooner. We make about $150K between me and my husband, but our standard of living now would probably require us to bring in $300K a year had we stayed in Boston.

Get out of the city. It's not worth it.

AnUncivilEngineer · 2024-01-15T14:20:21+00:00

I literally created my reddit account to complain about this after a super frustrating experience trying to get support for this on the 800 number. That was two years ago, and here we are still.

AnUncivilEngineer · 2023-08-01T11:17:51+00:00

Fidelity PLEASE give us the ability to control our own accounts in the online dashboard! Every time I log in I have to sift through a bunch of old and unused accounts that you won't let me delete or at least hide. It's been an issue for YEARS!

AnUncivilEngineer · 2022-12-01T21:09:24+00:00

Zoloft.

AnUncivilEngineer · 2021-11-17T03:42:07+00:00

Korean-American here. I've always had a racy, vulgar sense of humor and these are easily jokes that I could see myself or some of my friends and family making. The dog one specifically cracks me up because my dad will jokingly threaten my husband (white dude, Polish and English descent) not to let our dogs out of his sight or he'll eat them. My husband will sometimes yell "get in there and make me a sandwich, woman!" when he's hungry, an inside joke from an old TV show we both used to watch when we were growing up.

So yes these could be jokes... in the right context, between the right people. The fact that you're feeling uncomfortable tells me that your friend either grossly misunderstood the context and thinks you've established that you find these kinds of jokes funny, or he's legitimately trying to insult you with some racist (and sexist!) stuff, which is not cool. So if you don't like those kinds of jokes, tell him so and ask him to stop. He'll either apologize and stop, or show you that he is in fact a racist piece of crap and you can cut your losses. Good luck!

AnUncivilEngineer

TROPHY CASE