Move to Vanguard?

[palekadk]

My Dw and I have Roth and IRA at sharebuilder but numerous CFP and fellow ERs have advised to move to vanguard. They seem to have high fees, but due to great MF, rtf, etc they are preferred. Any Thoughts?

 

[mickeyd]

They seem to have high fees

I assume that this is not referring to Vanguard as they have the lowest in the world.

I moved all of my MF investments to VG 10+ years ago and have not missed a minute of sleep. If investment expenses are important to you and you are capable of managing your stash, you will find a home @ Vanguard.

 

[target2019]

My Dw and I have Roth and IRA at sharebuilder but numerous CFP and fellow ERs have advised to move to vanguard. They seem to have high fees, but due to great MF, rtf, etc they are preferred. Any Thoughts?

If you are referring to stock trading fees, you may get free trades if account is large enough. Vanguard MFs and ETFs have no trading fees.

 

[redduck]

Unless you are referring to buying a non-Vanguard mutual fund at Vanguard, their fees are quite low.

What makes you think that Vanguard's fees are high?

 

[youbet]

My Dw and I have Roth and IRA at sharebuilder but numerous CFP and fellow ERs have advised to move to vanguard. They seem to have high fees, but due to great MF, rtf, etc they are preferred. Any Thoughts?

Some folks are choosing to have accounts with two financial houses: Vanguard to have access to their MF's at Admiral ER's and another financial house which offers more flexible and less expensive brokerage services. For example, Vanguard and Ameritrade or similar.

 

[Ian S]

Vanguard offers fairly low prices for trading stocks and the more assets you have with them, the cheaper it can be. An advantage of TDAmeritrade, Fidelity, and Scottrade is that they have bricks and mortar offices you can visit for meeting face-to-face with an adviser. There is no reason you can't accounts with different firms. I have several but am gradually consolidating. Doubt I'll wind up with just one though.

 

[Happily Retired]

More feedback needed please

I'm watching this thread carefully. Have been considering moving $$$ there. Please provide more feedback.

 

[ziggy29]

If you want a *single* place to put all your retirement investments and you are primarily going to be in mutual funds, Vanguard is one of your best choices and many dedicated Bogleheads would say there *is* no other rational choice.

On the other hand, if you intend to do a fair bit of individual stock or ETF trading, IMO you may be better off putting at least that part of your portfolio with someone like Schwab or Fidelity.

 

[Ian S]

On the other hand, if you intend to do a fair bit of individual stock or ETF trading, IMO you may be better off putting at least that part of your portfolio with someone like Schwab or Fidelity.

Curious as to why? The only drawback I can see with Vanguard is their lack of bricks and mortar. It seems their brokerage fees are competitive.

 

[Options]

If you want a *single* place to put all your retirement investments and you are primarily going to be in mutual funds, Vanguard is one of your best choices and many dedicated Bogleheads would say there *is* no other rational choice.

On the other hand, if you intend to do a fair bit of individual stock or ETF trading, IMO you may be better off putting at least that part of your portfolio with someone like Schwab or Fidelity.

Emphasis added

+1
I second that last paragraph, as vendor selection depends on what you're looking for. Some swear Fidelity's website/service are superior to Vanguard's, but that may be a reflection of their "need" for service/information/financial advice products. Am personally quite happy with VG's website and other services--then again, I'm mostly self-sufficient and stick to 4 basic index funds. After consolidating almost all assets to VG, my financial recordkeeping life became substantially easier: for tracking, tax, rebalancing, AA purposes, among others.

 

[ExFlyBoy5]

Vanguard offers fairly low prices for trading stocks and the more assets you have with them, the cheaper it can be. An advantage of TDAmeritrade, Fidelity, and Scottrade is that they have bricks and mortar offices you can visit for meeting face-to-face with an adviser. There is no reason you can't accounts with different firms. I have several but am gradually consolidating. Doubt I'll wind up with just one though.

Interesting thing about the 'brick and mortar' places. My Dad has an account with Scottrade. He has some old school paper stocks that needed to be turned in because of a buy out. The FA that managed the office was a complete idiot and couldn't be much smarter than a potted plant. Anyway...I did a little research on this FA and his 'career' prior to being a FA was w#rking at Burger King. So...I don't put much credence in the brick and mortar FA places. It's your money, you should manage it...not some fry guy.

Sent from my mobile device so please excuse grammatical errors.

 

[target2019]

It's difficult to measure the convenience of a feature you don't use. I use Vanguard and Schwab. I also use Fidelity and USAA. With two kids we've transferred money back and forth between the accounts of 4 individuals in the past dozen or so years.

I set up Schwab brokerage in order to receive some gift stock. I could have done that with Vanguard, but I'm pretty certain it would not have gone smoothly.

Kid also needed to set up a brokerage, and the Schwab experience gave me confidence to do same.

Kid went away for 2 weeks to another country. Had set up Schwab checking to fund the Schwab Visa debit card, and took advantage of the perks associated with using that card overseas.

Half-way through the trip kid needed more in Schwab checking account. I decided on $1K. I called Schwab and it took about 10 minutes total to transfer from my checking to other. This included the CSR questions, and the actual transfer time.

I had tried to do this through the web interface, but could not find "the easy way."

This isn't a knock on Vanguard or any other institution. If your transferring anywhere, see what's in store when you need help.

 

[Happily Retired]

It's difficult to measure the convenience of a feature you don't use. I use Vanguard and Schwab. I also use Fidelity and USAA. With two kids we've transferred money back and forth between the accounts of 4 individuals in the past dozen or so years.

I set up Schwab brokerage in order to receive some gift stock. I could have done that with Vanguard, but I'm pretty certain it would not have gone smoothly.

Kid also needed to set up a brokerage, and the Schwab experience gave me confidence to do same.

Kid went away for 2 weeks to another country. Had set up Schwab checking to fund the Schwab Visa debit card, and took advantage of the perks associated with using that card overseas.

Half-way through the trip kid needed more in Schwab checking account. I decided on $1K. I called Schwab and it took about 10 minutes total to transfer from my checking to other. This included the CSR questions, and the actual transfer time.

I had tried to do this through the web interface, but could not find "the easy way."

This isn't a knock on Vanguard or any other institution. If your transferring anywhere, see what's in store when you need help.

"Kid went away for 2 weeks to another country. Had set up Schwab checking to fund the Schwab Visa debit card..."

Do you adopt? I'm a kid at heart, and lovable like a new puppy.
Europe would be nice right now.

Thanks to all for the valuable feedback. I've known about VG for a good long time... am now able to move some money there and wanted good feedback from customers saying that things were still good there.

 

[PatrickA5]

We've consolidated all retirement accounts with Vanguard. There were some glitches in some of the rollovers, but everything worked out. We have his and hers IRA's, Roth IRAs and 401Ks all with Vanguard. I like the ease of having everything in one place.

We consolidated all Checking, Savings and Brokerage money at Schwab. We're not making as much interest as when we had money spread out at Ally, ING, local Credit Union, etc, but I'm big into simplicity these days and like having most of our money in one place that can be seen on one website. Having said that we do have a little money in a checking account at our local bank, just to be able to go to a brick and mortar bank if the need arises.

I was listening to Clarke Howard the other day and he was telling people that have "electronic" statements to print out a copy and put in a file. He's worried about some big cyber attack that wipes out systems/records at banks. He thinks you should have some paper proof of your accounts. I went ahead and printed my latest quarterly statements, which was pretty simple having everything in a couple of places.

 

[FIREd]

We have most of our investments at Vanguard. The brokerage side of things is quite clunky, but I pay very low transaction fees and I don't trade a lot so I don't mind.

 

[RetireAge50]

Moved 2 Roth IRAs and 2 regular IRAs to Vanguard within the last month. Went smoothly and all with Wellington. Life is simple for my old age.

Still have a 401k with more stocks, bonds, some international, small and mid cap, oil and natural gas to mix things up.

 

[Helen]

I love the Wellseley fund, but I really don't like Vanguard's website.

We have accounts at Fidelity and Vanguard. Today I linked a new checking account to my Fidelity account. I had to do a few simple steps that took less than 2 minutes and can now transfer money from and to the checking account from Fido.

I then went to the Vanguard site to do the same thing. I have to wait two to three days then check my account to see two small deposits, then log back into Vanguard to let them know what the amounts of the deposits are. In addition, I have to fill out a form and have it notarized and send it in to Vanguard.

Three months ago I went to roll an account from Morgan Stanley into an existing Vanguard account. One account used a middle initial and the other account didn't, so I had to find a place that could do a medallion signature and send the paper work in to Vanguard. With Fidelity, I can hop on mass transit and be at their office to take care of things.

Fidelity has the basic index funds that I need and I believe they are even cheaper than Vanguard. If it weren't for the Wellesley fund I think I would move the other accounts to Fido. I can access Wellesley from Fido but I won't get the Admiral rate.

 

[target2019]

"Kid went away for 2 weeks to another country. Had set up Schwab checking to fund the Schwab Visa debit card..."

Do you adopt? I'm a kid at heart, and lovable like a new puppy.
Europe would be nice right now.

Thanks to all for the valuable feedback. I've known about VG for a good long time... am now able to move some money there and wanted good feedback from customers saying that things were still good there.

It was her account and her money. I just lent the 1k.

 

[Terryjm51]

Talked to vanguard today waiting on email. Two years away on lump sum pension want to know what they can do for me. Have about 6k in the vanguard stock plan . Need a little help on making the jump. Have a FA but not sure there in my best interest they want their 1%. Not sure just yet what vanguard can do for me, will keep you posted


Sent from my iPhone using Early Retirement Forum

 

[eroscott]

Had both Vanguard and Fidelity and was planning on going all Fidelity when we got out of the megacorp 401K plans that were at Fidelity.

After working with the brick and mortar local person I was surprised how low / comparable Fidelity main index funds were to Vanguard. Even equal. There was a price war a few years ago and Fidelity decided not to lose ground because of it.

I therefore when I rolled over my Fidelity 401k, I did it to a Fidelity Rollover IRA. I was able to use their straightforward index funds (Spartan I think). They have hybrids and others but they had larger ERs and comparing graphs didn't have any improvement.

Been very handy having a brick and mortar as I could pick up some forms and drop some off that needed signatures in front of them (vs notorized). 72t forms come to mind.

 

[target2019]

I love the Wellseley fund, but I really don't like Vanguard's website.

We have accounts at Fidelity and Vanguard. Today I linked a new checking account to my Fidelity account. I had to do a few simple steps that took less than 2 minutes and can now transfer money from and to the checking account from Fido.

I then went to the Vanguard site to do the same thing. I have to wait two to three days then check my account to see two small deposits, then log back into Vanguard to let them know what the amounts of the deposits are. In addition, I have to fill out a form and have it notarized and send it in to Vanguard.

I think there is a several-day delay when you actually transfer funds from Vanguard to bank. The transfer time was never a big deal for us, but it is worth mentioning.

 

[MRG]

There is, it's not just VGI, the whole industry does it. Even at today's low interest rates there's a major amount of float.

 

[Corporate ORphan]

We are debating whether to move my 401k to VG where most of our retirement accounts are or to Fidelity where we have a relatively small amount inherited from my mother. Since we mostly are a buy and hold account we were wondering what were the differences in costs. Sure they give you the expense ratios but that doesn't really tell you how much you'll pay. We figured all those brick and mortar storefronts of Fidelity need to be paid for.

I found a calculator on line that will tell you exactly what you will pay on a $10,000 account at 5% for 10 years for specific mutual funds. For our VG mutual funds, it said it's about $300. If we got similar ones at Fidelity its $3000!!!

Fund Analyzer

 

[eroscott]

We are debating whether to move my 401k to VG where most of our retirement accounts are or to Fidelity where we have a relatively small amount inherited from my mother. Since we mostly are a buy and hold account we were wondering what were the differences in costs. Sure they give you the expense ratios but that doesn't really tell you how much you'll pay. We figured all those brick and mortar storefronts of Fidelity need to be paid for.

I found a calculator on line that will tell you exactly what you will pay on a $10,000 account at 5% for 10 years for specific mutual funds. For our VG mutual funds, it said it's about $300. If we got similar ones at Fidelity its $3000!!!

Fund Analyzer

Make sure you compare apples to apples. Here is an example where they are the same.

http://i.imgur.com/Ev7OSKg.png

 

[Corporate ORphan]

Make sure you compare apples to apples. Here is an example where they are the same.

http://i.imgur.com/Ev7OSKg.png

Thank you for your info. Being unfamiliar with the Fidelity funds I didn't pick the right MFs. Its only about $300 more than VG. (which makes a lot more sense.)