Equivalent ETF To VG Wellesley?

[yakers]

I have an IRA in a Wells Fargo PMA account. It has done well for me but I am getting tired of managing it. Over many (10+) years DWs VG Wellesley fund (VWIAX) has done as well. So I would be happy to put the money in Wellesley but WF charges to hold this fund and while its not a lot of money ($35 per transaction) its irritating to pay fees on a no load low fee fund. Is there any equivalent ETF to Wellesley? I could liquidate the WF account but its nice to have those 100 free trades a year even though I rarely use even 5.

 

[Alan]

I don’t believe there is an equivalent single ETF fund that mirrors Wellesley.

 

[braumeister]

You can more or less mimic Wellesley with a combination of ETFs.

One possibility that is used by some is 40% SPY, 30% VCIT, and 30% VCSH.
That actually outperforms VWIAX most of the time.

 

[pb4uski]

The $35 fee is unclear.... if you buy Wellesley once is it a one-time $35 charge? If so, I would do that.... and then as dividends are paid to your settlement account invest them in a no-cost total stock fund until they get to a certain amount, and then rinse and repeat.

Or move it to Vanguard, buy the real thing and they give you 25 free trades a year as I recall.

 

[audreyh1]

Set up your distributions to automatically reinvest - that won’t cost. So you can do a one time buy for $35, no big deal IMO.

If you are still adding funds to your IRA, then let them accumulate in something else.
If that gets big enough you can do another buy.

Or consider rolling over your IRA to Vanguard.

 

[LOL!]

It seems that since the Bogleheads love this fund that they would come up with a wiki article on Approximating Wellesley and Approximating Wellington, just like they have with Approximating total stock market and its cousin.

 

[Sunset]

Transfer your IRA to Vanguard, they don't charge fees for any vanguard fund purchase or sale, and no account fees.

 

[24601NoMore]

I don't believe there's a "comparable" ETF anywhere, and the Bogleheaders aren't likely to come up with something that can approximate it given the alpha that Wellington management has consistently delivered on Wellesley (and Wellington). Plus, both funds hold a pretty small # of stocks so an comparable ETF becomes all but impossible to create..

Probably just need to determine if the $35 transaction fee is preferable to having another separate account at Vanguard to manage.

The fund transaction fees are indeed pretty annoying - even though Fido, TD and others call me on a regular basis looking for more business, I can't justify buying TF funds through them or others like Schwab..just too much $$ when you can get the exact same fund through the fund company (VG in this case). And the selection of NTF funds are usually ones with 12b-1 fees, long holding periods needed to get "free" trade, etc.

How Fido and others think they can charge $49 and up for TF buys and sells on mutual funds is beyond me..guess they're not really "that" interested in shareholders who want to have funds from multiple fund families all under one roof, which ultimately makes it a real PITA to manage if you want to pick funds from across multiple fund families..