Fidelity or Vangaurd (bonds, broker, mutual funds, trading)
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I have used Fidelity before, but have been with Vanguard for a while now. I think their selections are great and the website is very user-friendly. I use Vanguard for everything now and prefer them.
I have used fidelity for 27 years now. 90 % of my investments are fidelity funds . I keep about 10% at vanguard .
I am a private access client with fidelity.
they threw a great dinner for us last year. steak and wine and nooooo sales pitches at all. very nicely done. I get a nice yearly retirement report worked up that is more detailed than the on line one.
How is your Fidelity Monitor portfolio performing against your Vanguard? I know you were comparing them a while ago.
it isn't a comparison of portfolio's . the vanguard fund is a proxy for the fidelity one that is in the model. it is only a short term bond fund so being i had money at vanguard i bought the vanguard one to add to the fidelity one i also owned . the vanguard short term bond fund did a bit better than the fidelity one.
Last edited by mathjak107; 01-10-2015 at 03:40 AM..
Per the title of this thread, scrupulously avoid Vangaurd! They're a scam! Vanguard, on the other hand, is an entirely reasonable choice.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mathjak107
I am a private access client with fidelity.
they threw a great dinner for us last year. steak and wine and nooooo sales pitches at all.
I'm a mucho-grande stratospheric holy exalted-partner with Vanguard, but don't receive any steak dinners, frequent-flier miles, bonuses for referrals or talking stuffed animals. There isn't even a physical office-building into which I could stroll for a face to face conversation. The tagline of Vanguard is low fees, rather than perks. While I do feel jilted in being treated like a middle-class Joe Sixpack, when tallying up the cumulative numbers, the low fees are probably worth it.
Still, a steak dinner (with zero impact on fees) would be nice! I mean, even if I had to pay for the dinner out-of-pocket, just the networking opportunity would be eminently welcome! Maybe I screwed up, and joined Vangaurd by mistake?
Low fees are just another parameter along with so many that go into the pot.
Nothing wrong with getting at least that aspect right.
But you can also pay a bit higher in fees and make it up elsewhere. Tax planning ,portfolio construction , buy in points and sell points will easily eclipse any bit of slightly higher fees.
The model i follow made up of fidelity funds the last 25 plus years is ahead of an s&p 500 fund or total market fund by about 450k today.
If you use a fund family use them because they fit into your total plan and offer what you need not based only on the fact their fees may be slightly lower.
You can give back a few hundred thousand dollars you gained via just poor tax planning in the 2nd half of the game when you start spending down.
No one gets all aspects right. Some will have lower fees and drop the ball elsewhere, some will have higher fees and better buy in prices.
Others may tax plan better.
Jack was a brilliant marketer and he got folks so fixated on fees and indexing that few realize there are so many parameters you need to get right and blowing it in one place is easily picked up in another.
The important thing is to get all the pieces to your puzzle at your finger tips so you have all the right parameters to work with .
I have accounts at both but fidelity offers more of the aspects i want including local offices with training we can go to.
Last edited by mathjak107; 01-10-2015 at 07:18 PM..
To the above post (#26), I already screwed up by overvaluing the European portion of my portfolio... since around 1997. I'd have made the same mistake with Vanguard, Fidelity, T Rowe Price, Schwab, Merrill Lynch, or Uncle Buck's Invest-o-Rama. Oddly enough, I'd have avoided this mistake by unexamined and slavish worship of my hallowed idol Jack Bogle. But I still wouldn't have gotten any free steaks!
Warren Buffett is from Omaha... do Berkshire Hathaway investors get free Omaha steaks?
Depending on where you are in life and your investment strategy, you might want to look at Vanguard's Payout Fund (VPGDX) or Fidelity's Income Replacement Funds. I'm heavy into Fidelity's FIXRX 2042 fund. They basically provide an allocation that a traditional advisor would at a fixed expense ratio. Fidelity uses the traditional approach where an increasing percent of your money is moved to bonds as your target date approaches and your annual payout can vary (I have the payout turned off), while Vanguard is approximating a constant 60/40 split with a 4% payout rate.
Vanguard's expense ratio about .34 and Fidelity's is .68. However, I'm not 100% sure that Fidelity won't slip in some other transaction fees. I can't understand their prospectus when it comes to describing the fund's fees. They mention the expense ratio doesn't include all transaction fees, but never fully explain what one can additionally expect to pay (that I could find). Another thing about Fidelity that seems somewhat sneaky is that the exact same set of income replacement funds have their equivalent "advisor" income replacement fund. The only difference is there is an additional one percent added to the expense ratio that obviously goes to the advisor. Now that's one lazy investor when he can buy the exact same fund himself and save on the expense ratio, but chooses to have his advisor buy it for him!
For income, I own 15000 shares of PIMCO's PCI. It's a leveraged multi-sector bond CEF that's well hedged. I like owning a CEF to get the leverage and I like the investment manager to be shielded from having to worry about redemptions. I don't think Fidelity or Vanguard manage any CEFs. However, given interest rates in the US are likely to rise and the possibility of turmoil in the credit markets due to financial problems with energy E&P companies, its price will probably continue to decline, but I still expect a positive total return in 2015.
Last edited by mitchmiller9; 01-11-2015 at 01:35 AM..
the payout funds are really a marketing creation rather than anything you want to count on for a lifetime of income.
they try to structure the payouts to last x amount of years but there are no guarantees it will and you get no more money from the fund once yours is gone if that should happen .
as anyone who follows retirement research can tell you while odds are good you will not run out of money drawing x amount nothing is 100% and failure is definately an option.
they were designed to be the spia for those who do not want an spia but have none of the guarrantees of going on the insurers dime if your own money runs out.
You're right they are designed to be a SPIA that is indexed to inflation, for those that want ready access to their money.
FIXRX is a managed fund. I'm assuming the equity allocation across sectors varies at the discretion of the manager. If you look at the content of FIXRX, it looks like a traditional 60/40 allocation across ten or so Fidelity funds. They do have a "managed" payout (smart pay), but you can turn it on/off on a monthly basis. That's why I look at it as my "low cost" advisor, that does all my rebalancing for me. By the time 2042 is reached, the fund will be 100% bonds (assuming I haven't drained it all as is the intent of the fund's setup). Yes.. I'm being lazy because they publish 100% of the fund's composition and there are only two funds in there now that are closed to the public. So I could effectively mimic it on my own, but the overall fees would likely be higher.
For now, I'm not drawing any payout. I have it turned off. When I turn it on in a few years, I'm planning to take less than the full payout in a single year. In other words, I'll turn on "smart pay" for perhaps six months, then shut it off again. I plan to use approximately a 3% drawdown rate.
I figure if that fails, then so does a traditional allocation across stocks and bonds (assuming you move towards 100% bonds as you approach end of life).
Last edited by mitchmiller9; 01-11-2015 at 02:34 AM..
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
