Consolidation question?

[BobMW]

62, approximately year out from retirement. Thanks to knowledge gleamed here in last year have put together a pretty comprehensive spreadsheet of investments and now know my allocation is 75/25. I see now I’m a little all over place and want to consolidate to simplify. Have Roth IRAs at VG, 401K with AIG, annuity at Talcott / Hartford, and taxable investments at Steifel. Inherited the Steifel money & have mostly left it there. It’s about 45% of my investments. Funny I don’t find anything on Steifel when I search here. Leaning towards Schawb or Fido, though could leave VG alone since DWs IRAs are there also. Interested as always to hear input & comments

[Souschef]

I just Googled Steifel and it claims to be a "Wealth Management" company. That normally means they manage your assets into their wealth. I do not know what they charge, but I would transfer all you have there to Fido and save the management fee.

[MichaelB]

This thread will get better visibility in the “Fire and Money” forum.

[Ready]

If you are simply asking for opinions on choosing between Schwab, Fidelity or Vanguard, we have many members here using all of those firms. I don’t believe any one of them is universally best or worst. Different people have different experiences with them but all are reputable firms and a reasonable choice for you to go with.

I have funds in all three of them and I see no reason to consolidate. I have mutual funds that are managed by each of those companies. So while I could take some Schwab mutual funds and have Fidelity take over as the custodian of them, I don’t see what point it would serve. And if I sold the funds to move the money to another firm i would incur capital gains taxes. So for me the simplest thing is just to leave it all alone.

There may be some advantage to having all of your IRAs in one place when you are close to taking out your RMDs since the calculations for them can be tricky and it’s probably easier to only have to do one set of calculations for the entire balance of your IRAs.

[pb4uski]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ready If you are simply asking for opinions on choosing between Schwab, Fidelity or Vanguard, we have many members here using all of those firms. ...

I'm one of those that have accounts at the Big Three. So far, I like Schwab the best, but that is the account that I've had for the least amount of time and they haven't done anything yet to get me mad.

[Dtail]

My parents had some of their investments at Stifel and I went through each position with their advisor and the history and was satisfied overall.
Nevertheless, all my stock investments are at Fidelity, so moved everything there.
Very happy with Fidelity, but have never used Vanguard or Schwab.

[VanWinkle]

I have accounts at Vanguard and Fidelity, really have seen no difference in service or results.

[Montecfo]

I would consolidate at one brokerage. Kiplinger and Barron's do annual reviews of the brokers and the analysis is quite good. That's a good place to start. Vanguard never participates which is think says a lot.

Personally I use E*Trade and TDAmeritrade and favor both over Schwab. I currently use the former two. Also use Fidelity with my DAF. I used Schwab for years withy 401k but consolidated at E*Trade. I invest mostly in individual stocks but also funds.

If you move money make sure you get cash for doing so. Several brokerages offer this and more probably have unwritten policies to do so.