Remember the indexes are regularly adjusted by their authors within asset class boundaries as well.
DFA simply appears to tweak theirs a little by some criteria I am unable to determine. Sounds like a managed approach to indexing. I'm sure someone has a book or paper explaining that approach and a few thousand people swear its the best and a few thousand think the other few thousand are nuts.
In all the analyses I looked at, it appeared that taking both fund shops and making portfolios of roughly equivalent portfolios - and i'm handicapping DFA slightly in that they have more offerings in many areas and they like to use them - and i'm equally handicapping vanguard because THEY have more offerings in some areas and dont care if you use them...the net difference per 100k is a few thousand a year. Either way. Depending on whose analysis you read. And which slice of the pie in terms of number of years and when the years start and stop.
The stuff DFA is missing is sometimes important...among them a TIPS fund and a MM fund...and i'm not sure if they can do bank account EFT transactions, check writing and all that sort of stuff...or if thats even important to you.
I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that you would be better off with either vanguard or dfa than almost anyone else. If you feel the advisor would help you set up a better portfolio than you would on your own with vanguard, then it makes sense.
I just could never bring myself to pay someone extra to do something I feel ok about doing myself, simply to get access to somebody's funds who hide behind the curtain.
Ice. And a goalie. When I played you were considered a big fat wuss if you wore a helmet and you werent the goalie. I played a little right wing, defense and ended up in goal after one of my knees started acting up when I was a teen. The one thing I miss about iceskating vs rollerblading is it feels a lot better when you fall on ice and slide. The good news is I've only taken a dive once on wheels, so apparently the road rash is good incentive to stay upright.
You do remember the old saw that hockey players almost always end up marrying figure skaters, because they spend so much time in practice on ice they're the only members of the opposite sex that they see?
I've seen male figure skaters. I wish your daughter the best of luck...