Her Life Savings Mysteriously Disappeared After a Systems Glitch

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Her Life Savings Mysteriously Disappeared After a Systems Glitch

Fidelity Investments notified a customer that her phone number and email address had been removed from her profile. When she logged in, her accounts and savings were nowhere to be found.


Alain Pilon

By Tara Siegel Bernard
April 25, 2026, 5:02 a.m. ET

Q. I don’t understand how a systems update could delete all of my financial accounts and existence at Fidelity, with no meaningful explanation or apology. This experience has been and continues to be one of the worst of my life.

— Marta Gruntmane, Eagle, Colo.

Nobody thinks about the enormous amount of faith we put into the invisible infrastructure that continuously tracks and documents our financial accounts, until that one day when things go very wrong.

For Ms. Gruntmane, a 35-year-old physician assistant, that moment came on the Friday morning before Easter, as she was getting ready to take her daughter to school. Fidelity Investments sent messages alerting her that her phone number and email address had been removed from her profile — and to contact Fidelity if she hadn’t done it.

Alarmed, she quickly logged in, “only to find that all of my accounts had disappeared and my balance showed zero dollars."

{snip}

Tara Siegel Bernard writes about personal finance for The Times, from saving for college to paying for retirement and everything in between.

[bucolic_frolic]

1. Rampant aspect of digital records

A very big mutual fund company once advised me to login every day. I seem to recall them saying they weren't responsible if adverse situations weren't immediately reported. Bank same thing. One long, long term company recently asked me for updates, one question was 'where did you get your funds for this account?' Like it's been there about 30 years, you're asking now?

Keep a digital record, even if only every quarter statement, monthly all the better. Two different banks each with checking accounts is a good idea.

The financial industry, the medical system, the insurers, digital vehicles, big tech .... and those are just the legal entities to worry about.

There are days I say I've lived too long.

[progree]

2. "Are you sure you shouldn't be calling Schwab?"

https://archive.ph/xeMtb#selection-4849.0-4849.190

Alarmed, she quickly logged in, “only to find that all of my accounts had disappeared and my balance showed zero dollars.”

It seemed that Fidelity had eliminated all traces of her longstanding financial relationship with it,

Her online statements and tax documents had also vanished, so she couldn’t immediately find any of her account numbers, she said.

Now in full panic mode, she called Fidelity on her way into her clinic; it told her that she didn’t have any accounts there.

“Are you sure you shouldn’t be calling Schwab?” Ms. Gruntmane recalled one representative saying, referring to Charles Schwab. “Are you sure it’s with us?”

Even if her account was closed or deleted, the reps told her, they could usually see that. They also refused to connect her with the fraud department, Ms. Gruntmane recalled, for the same reason — if there wasn’t any trace of her accounts, how could there be a fraud?

((the emails she got indicated she had a profile there, 'splain that rep - see OP -progree))

((anyway, they finally pulled it all together and restored it all -progree))

. . . From here on in, she said, she’s going to be sure to keep physical evidence of her accounts and balances in a secure place. Her tale serves as a reminder that we all should adopt that habit.

Don't they have something called, I forget, some fancy tech term, umm, BACKUPS, that's the word I was searching for!

Although I don't adhere perfectly to the schedule, I check my Vanguard account, weekly, which links to my other brokerage accounts, so I can check them all. I compare the number of shares from what I recorded previously.

I check my bank account and credit card accounts every 3 days (another schedule I don't adhere to perfectly).

I save the year end statement and a few others of all accounts yearly (I should increase that frequency).

Yes, I have an account at Fidelity, sigh.

[cliffside]

3. The phrase "Don't put all your eggs in one basket" comes to mind. nt

[lastlib]

4. Why I keep virtually everything related to my accounts.....

paper statements back to 1988. Electronic backups out the wazoo.