Do you prefer Fidelity or Vanguard for rollover 401k to IRA?

[spncity]

Does it make much difference? Does this boil down to personal preference? Or is there a difference in cost/fees?

Thanks for any comments.

 

[gindie]

We are using Fidelity because their universe of No Transaction Fee funds is larger than Vanguard's. Those are the funds from other companies that can be purchased without additional fee.

 

[Mwsinron]

Use both Fidelity and Vanguard. I have not had a problem with either. Fidelity does have brick and mortar places if you prefer the person to person thing.

 

[Anansi]

Fidelity does have brick and mortar places if you prefer the person to person thing.

Fidelity also has the best web site if that is important to you.

 

[Ed_The_Gypsy]

Does it make much difference? Does this boil down to personal preference? Or is there a difference in cost/fees?

I think it was just the Brownian motion in my brain cells one day. (translation: I don't remember and it doesn't make much difference. They are both pretty good.)

 

[Rich_by_the_Bay]

Fidelity also has the best web site if that is important to you.

What do you like better about it?

 

[hogwild]

I have been trying to decide the same thing. I may end up using both. But I agree that Fidelity has the best site. Here are some of the reasons:

Income Management Account
Excellent Retirement Income Planner
Full View
Many videos for education and product information
Easy account maintenance (transfers between accounts or accounts and bank)
A ton of research on stocks and funds

 

[frayne]

I use both, FIDO for IRA and Vandy for after tax investments. Never had a problem with either one.

 

[janeeyre]

I use Vanguard because it is located near my home and my daughter (graduates in a few weeks from Villanova) will be working there.

 

[Anansi]

What do you like better about it?

More or less everything. It is just well done and something they have obviously put a lot of effort into, had some very sharp technical people develop and continue to improve. Everyone may not agree, but I have never heard anything but positive comments about their site and in any of the reviews I have read in any financial magazines, Fidelity is always ranked as having the best site.

I can't give you a feature by feature comparison to Vanguard, but here are few more specific observations:

There is simply more content at Fidelity, especially very good free research and tools for comparing investments. You can do almost all account management through the site. They have a much better stock trading engine than Vaguard. They provide excellent tracking of your lot history for each position (I recall a thread on this recently where many people were complaining about the difficulty of tracking this. Some people said they wouldn't do dividend reinvestment just because of the record keeping. Fidelity takes care of that). They have a 'full view' feature which lets you consolidate many or all of your financial records (stocks, bank accounts, credit cards) in one place.

All of this is only important, of course, if you use these sort of features. If you have everything in index funds and only look in on them once a year, which is a reasonable way to live, then it doesn't really matter what the web site does.

 

[unclemick]

As long as we are anonomous on this forum, I supose I can admit:

1. I once owned Ford AND Chevy pickups at the same time - both were used though.

2. Had a Vanguard and Fidelity IRA rollover in the late 90's - one from my main job and and another from a temp job.

All Vanguard now.

heh heh heh heh - confession is good for the soul?? Right?

 

[Olav23]

I think vanguard has more fees for lower balances than fidelity. If you have over 10k in your IRA, you probably won't risk any fees at either place. Vanguard might still get you with the $10 maintenance fee if you do index funds with less than 10k though.

EDIT- oops, didn't catch the post on vanguard reducing fees. I think they still might get you with the $20 fee instead of a few of the $10 ones, though. (without reading too deeply into the new fee structures)

 

[jIMOh]

T Rowe Price works for me

 

[spncity]

Thank you, everyone, for comments.

I have to admit I did find what I was needing "faster" on the Fidelity website. Also tested out the "live chat" on Fidelity and it was very helpful.

Appreciate the input.

 

[clifp]

For many years I was exclusively a Schwab customer.

Then I got 15,000 miles for opening a Fidelity account, plus I like the Fidelity Spartan International fund. Then I took advantage of TD Ameritrades miles+ money offer. Recently, I moved my Vanguard GNMA fund to Vanguard so I could convert to to admiral shares.

So now I have 4 brokerage accounts, but I'll close Ameritrade soon.

IMO if you are almost exclusively a mutual fund person Vanguard is the way to go. The funds have lower expense and the fact that fund holders profit from most of the fees, means that generally Vanguard is lower cost than any one else.

I think if you are primarily a stock investor Schwab is superior, although the difference between Fidelity and Schwab are pretty close. Fidelity has slightly cheaper commission $8 vs $10 (for large accounts), and the Fidelity One view is terrific. On the other hand Schwab has superior research information, and offers a wider range of investment opportunities (IPO, alternative investments, etc.) and has a terrific active trading platform Schwab StreetSmart Pro. I think it is a toss-up between Fido and Schwab as to who has the best website, with Vanguard a distance third.

If your IRA will be a mix of funds, stocks and ETFs than Fidelity may very well be the right choice for you.

One strong bit of advice try to consolidate financial activiities with one of the big 3, at least until you get to the $250K and later the $1 million. Once you get to a million in household assets, all of them add numerous free services, and eliminate tons of fees (wire transfer, overdraft, checking etc.) I recently had to open a bank account for the first time in more than a decade, and I was stunned by the myriad of fees that banks charge for services that Schwab gives me for free.