I just got started with retirement savings this last tax year with a $3000 contribution into Vanguard total Stock Market Index Fund directly though Vanguard. I am now thinking it would have been a better choice to open my IRA account with Scottrade. I figure I will have more flexibility over the next 40+ years since scottrade offers a full selection of securities and mutual funds, as opposed to Vanguards relatively limited offerings of only their own funds.
My questions are: 1. Am I thinking right here; is there truly and advantage in going with Scottrade? 2. How do I go about making the transfer, and what are the fees?
I had a similar question. I was going to open up a Roth this week, and was deciding whether it was worth opening a Scottrade or Ameritrade acct when I know that I'm only going to get Vanguard funds for the foreseeable future.
I've been reading all of the IRA/retirement threads, but I'm still not sure what the advantages of a brokerage account for an IRA are? Thanks.
depends on whether you want to purchase individual stocks, options, etc. in your ira. i think vanguard offers all of those as well as scottrade. scottrade prolly has cheaper commissions if you plan on trading a lot. that's about the difference. many brokerage have no fee ira's while others charge maintenance fees either quarterly or yearly for balance below their minimum (anywhere from 5k to 30k).
the advantage with scottstrade is you'll have a new friend name Scott as for the fees, what can you do, your new friend scott will take care of you now, you two can gang up and get the fees back from the meanie Vanguard
Thanks for the advice. I'm going to call vangurad and see what they say. I don't plan on doing a lot of trading in the IRA account, but who knows, I've got a long time to go before I retire.'
Is is the consensus here that Scottrade is the best discount online brokerage?
well scottrade isnt going to charge you any fees except the 7 dollar commisions. however, if you want to trade mutual funds, so long as they are no-load funds, you trade them free. no maintenece fees or inactivity feess
as far as the transfer, its easy, fill out a couple forms, get ur account over, vanguard will hit u with a fee that ranges basically form 50-95 bucks.
As someone siad, Vanguard has brokerage accounts. So you can buy a lot of funds just like Scotttrade.
"How to get started Purchase funds from other companies through Vanguard Brokerage Services®. You'll broaden your holdings and consolidate your portfolio for more cost-effective trading.
Open a Vanguard® Brokerage account"
Now if Scottrade has something Vanguard doesn't, then ignore this.
Vanguard usually is the low cost place for investing.
I believe Vanguard is more expensive than Scottrade if you plan on using their brokerage service to purchase indiviual stocks. Also, the reason why I moved from Vanguard to Scottrade, is that Vanguard charges a yearly maint fee if your IRA is below a certain amount (I forget how much...$5k?) Scottrade doesn't. There were also dividend reinvestment fees for my Vanguard acct.
did something similar to this last year, its cheaper, for the small time investor, to buy vanguard mutual funds, through scottrade, than it is to do it directly from vanguard...if I remember correctly scottrade will do all the work for you, so call them and ask them these questions.
I just asked a financial advisor I know about this, and I discovered you can have as many Roth IRA accounts as you wish. I had no idea. I guess this may have been obvious, but I didn't realize. I think I may just go ahead and contribute this year to my Vanguard so as to get above their account fee limit and then next year start my Scottrade (or maybe optionsxpress or some other).
Disclaimer: By providing links to other sites, FatWallet.com does not guarantee, approve or endorse the information or products available at these sites, nor does a link indicate any association with or endorsement by the linked site to FatWallet.com.
