Which brokerage account do you use? Did you switch before or after retirement? I stupidly moved my money out of TD ameritrade in September because i thought I was refinancing with BofA to ML. I ended up not doing that and now I am considering moving back I don't like ML website or dashboard. But since I'm now not stuck at TD, I figure I might as well research moving to somewhere else. Possibly Fidelity or Vanguard.
What do you have? Did you switch? And what are the pros and cons?
TDAmeritade is no longer; bought by Schwab and getting integrated as we speak. I would not consider them simply because you don't know which people and which offices will survive. They will certainly be rebranded regardless.
We're 100% with Schwab now. DW was a megabank SVP and kept her IRA there for a number of years, but incompetent reps finally drove her out. We have a good Schwab rep who deals quickly with questions and administrivia. That is key. IIRC he recently told me that the new Schwab threshold for assigning a named rep to a customer is $1M in the customer/household accounts. At that level you are also a "pinnacle" customer and get what is claimed to be higher priority telephone service.
I also have my checking at Schwab Bank, which is well integrated with their other services.
Fido is probably similar. Both have brick & mortar offices which I like, but truth be told I haven't' seen our rep face to face in at least a couple of years.
From reports, VG is less personal and has only a couple of US offices. Fees for advisory services seem to be lower than Schwab & Fico. I circulated an RFP to provide investment services for a $5M nonprofit portfolio and VG came in cheapest at 40bps. We chose an advisor who was set up for more personal service at 59bps and are very happy with the decision, but YMMV.
My personal opinion is that the big banks like ML, Morgan Stanley, etc. view retail investors as cows to be milked, ancillary to their main business. Morgan Stanley chortles about running a 25% net profit on their "wealth management" business line.
Fast Eddie, Raymond James, etc. do not have good reputations around here for various reasons. High costs, pushing expensive products, etc. Here is a completely unfair but hilarious video:
Here is a humorous approach to a serious subject from investment icon Dr. William Sharpe:
