Last year I transfered three accounts from Schwab to Vanguard - regular account, IRA traditional, and IRA ROTH and it was pretty easy and all done online via Vanguard and took about a week. Schwab charges $50 to move an account however but I wanted everything at Vanguard. Schwab did not pay near what Schwab did on "cash". Vanguard pays at least 2.3 % now via their Ferderal MM fund plus Schwab was more expensive for pretty much everything including mutual funds and stock/ETF trades.

https://investor.vanguard.com/...ow-to-transfer-money

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Originally posted by grumpy1:
Last year I transfered three accounts from Schwab to Vanguard - regular account, IRA traditional, and IRA ROTH and it was pretty easy and all done online via Vanguard and took about a week. Schwab charges $50 to move an account however but I wanted everything at Vanguard. Schwab did not pay near what Schwab did on "cash". Vanguard pays at least 2.3 % now via their Ferderal MM fund plus Schwab was more expensive for pretty much everything including mutual funds and stock/ETF trades.

https://investor.vanguard.com/...ow-to-transfer-money

This reminded me.. I wanted to fully fund an emergeny cache. My money was just sitting in my checking account that paid nothing. I once had a savings account at the same bank that paid %.05 . I did some research and opened up a savings account online at Ally. My cash is earning 2.2%. That small change took about 5 minutes to make. Just trying to make all my dollars do a little work.

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Originally posted by crue-dell:

quote:

Originally posted by Rey HRH:
It's a marketing call. I think gays and lesbians have a higher per capita income and net worth than the average person.

But what did you get for your 1.35% ? Did they manage your funds for you as in buy and sell and maintain a portfolio?

It wasn't a bad way to get started, as I was truly ignorant of investing. I believe that putting money in the accounts consistently is better than trying to trim fees. Yes, he maintained a Roth IRA that contained around 7 mutual funds and a single account of about the same size. I automatically deposited money monthly and just didn't pay much attention. I have had very good growth that has been in line with my 401K through work and has just followed the market averages. I would meet annually with the advisor and ask questions, but looking back he didn't seem interested in actually teaching me anything.

As you say, not a bad way to get started. I didn't realize people are being "ripped off" but the financial advisor has to eat and feed his family too. You were paying him fees to buy mutual funds that have their own fees.

I did my own investing and then passed the task off to my wife when I really got busy with work. This was shortly after 2008. I was into paying expensive newsletters, etc. She took out then 201k and turned it back to a 401k.

But lately, I wanted someway to avoid the next bear market so I gave Fisher Investments a portion of my money to manage for which I pay 1.25%. In turn, they buy individual stocks based on their puts and calls on the sectors of the MSCI world index.

They also give quarterly seminars on their outlooks with free meals at nice hotels, monthly webinars, weekly newsletters, and a personal advisor that calls me up. I told the guy I don't really need much handling so that gave him a clue. I told them call me if there's any big moves afoot as I also manage a good portion of the money under my control based on their market outlooks and calls.

i think it is good you are taking the initiative.
I also like the fact you are communicating the reasons why.
It is your money and if you do not like the folks and who they support most definitely remove them from the picture.
Good luck, you will do great.

I left Merrill Lynch a year or so ago after (like the OP, with EJ) being a customer far longer than I should have, and migrated over to Charles Schwab and am far more pleased with their strategy and pricing. Change can be a good thing...hope Vanguard works out well for you, OP.

quote:

Originally posted by crue-dell:

quote:

Originally posted by grumpy1:
Last year I transfered three accounts from Schwab to Vanguard - regular account, IRA traditional, and IRA ROTH and it was pretty easy and all done online via Vanguard and took about a week. Schwab charges $50 to move an account however but I wanted everything at Vanguard. Schwab did not pay near what Schwab did on "cash". Vanguard pays at least 2.3 % now via their Ferderal MM fund plus Schwab was more expensive for pretty much everything including mutual funds and stock/ETF trades.

https://investor.vanguard.com/...ow-to-transfer-money

This reminded me.. I wanted to fully fund an emergeny cache. My money was just sitting in my checking account that paid nothing. I once had a savings account at the same bank that paid %.05 . I did some research and opened up a savings account online at Ally. My cash is earning 2.2%. That small change took about 5 minutes to make. Just trying to make all my dollars do a little work.

Good for you. I have my bank account setup so I can move money in and out of one of my Vanguard
accounts at no cost. It takes about 1-2 business days.