I’ve been annoyed with the brokerage firm that I’ve been using for quite some time, so I finally decided to switch to a different one.

The annoyance wasn’t all that serious, which is why it took me so long to make the switch, I mostly found it hard to navigate their web site. There were a few other things, but they are all minor little nits and hardly worth going into.

Anyway, years ago I set my sister up in TD Ameritrade, and she seems satisfied with that, so I decided to switch over to it. Except it’s no longer TD Ameritrade. It’s now been taken over by Charles Schwab.

I made the switch last week, and in less than a week all my holdings (of which there aren’t an awful lot) had been transferred over to the new accounts, both the Individual and the Roth IRA.

I also linked up my checking account and my Apple savings account so that I could easily transfer cash back and forth, which I don’t expect to do very often.

Everything went pretty smoothly except for one tiny little glitch.

When I initially created each of the accounts, the account number was displayed on the screen. I did not make a note of them, as I figured I could get them later on.

I was wrong.

Once the accounts were created, the account numbers did not display on any screen on the web site, only the last three digits. Like this: xxxxx123

Well, I like to have my account numbers, so I called their help number and explained my problem. After the woman confirmed my identity, she laughed and gave me the account numbers. She said they only print out on the monthly activity statements. It’s a security thing. You know, in case someone is looking over my shoulder at the screen.

Weird.

Anyway, other than that glitch, everything else seems to be going smoothly. The web site is much easier to navigate and the other little annoyances aren’t applicable. So far so good.

These days, other than a few shares of Apple stock and the ETF that follows the S&P 500, I mostly just have dividend stocks like MAIN—Main Street Capital, which pays out a dividend of nearly 8% right now and has been pretty consistent.