How did you do the trustee to trustee transfer for $25? Did you fill out a form with the trustee you transferred to and authorize them to pull the money from STRATA?
Yes. I moved it over to my SEP IRA at Interactive Brokers. On IBKR's site, I initiated a "Direct Trustee-to-Trustee" transfer, downloaded and filled out the form, and either emailed or faxed (I don't recall) the form to Strata. IBKR's form required a Medallion Signature Guarantee which I got from my bank with no problem. I don't know about E-Trade. One thing to note is that LC / Strata does not utilize ACATS, so they had to send a check or wire to IBKR.
Or did you fill out a form with STRATA and ask them to send the money to your new trustee? I'm moving mine to E*Trade. I did find their form to pull money from another trustee, but was wondering if it would be faster and more trouble free to ask STRATA to send it to E*Trade.
I directed Strata utilizing IBKR's form. I am not a fan of Strata's form, mainly due to the fact that they don't acknowledge or allow you to specify "Known Exception" for doing a "60-day Rollover". They actually say that it will be classified as an early distribution and that I'd have to work it out with my taxes later which is total bunk. This doesn't apply to a "Direct Transfer" however. When I did my "Rollover", LC sent me their "revised" Strata form that DOES allow you to specify "Known Exception".
Also do you "withdraw" from Lending Club first so that they move the money from the Lending Club account and into STRATA?
Yes. You must initiate a withdrawal on LC's site first and wait for the funds to arrive in your account at Strata.
Did STRATA take the $25 fee from your account, or are you able to pay for it with your own funds to keep the most possible in the IRA?
Yes and Yes. Here's where Strata stood up. When I did my large Direct Transfer, they took the $25 out of the funds being transferred. Not a big deal I thought considering I was going to be able to better invest my funds elsewhere. I later talked to them when I had finished liquidating the last few remaining notes. I asked if the $50 fee could be paid with outside funds (AKA credit card). They said yes, I could. I then asked if that were the case, could they reallocate the earlier fee of $25 and charge me $75 which they agreed to do, and did. That way 100% of the funds did in fact get transferred, although $75 represented only 0.5% of the cash involved. So I used LC's form for the Rollover, specified in a cover sheet and on the transfer form in the margin that any and all fees were to be paid with outside funds. Well, they ended up taking $50 out of my funds like before. I called Strata and long story short, they took my credit card over the phone, charged $75 to it, and sent $75 to IBKR which finalized my exit from LC for this IRA.
All said and done, from submission of the form to Strata to receiving the funds at Interactive Brokers, it took approximately 2-3 weeks if I remember correctly.
I now need to transfer my wife's which had fully liquidated a couple months ago, but wanted to get through my SEP IRA first to see how it went. Especially now with the market in this correction.