Hello,
first post to the forum but have been reading the blog and forum for a couple of months now.
I just inherited the family business and previously my dad had setup a Simple IRA retirement plan for the business with his financial advisor. I've recently paid more attention to this account and what fees i'm paying, etc...
currently I have about 101k in the account. 23k in cash, some in stocks, some in mutual funds (with too high of expense ratios). so obviously I'm not happy about having almost 2 years worth of contributions sitting in cash and missing out on the almost 20% gains of the market. I'm also paying the advisor 1% of transaction amount, plus cost of trades (20.00 for mutual funds and stocks). so to put my 23k to work I'm going to pay at least 250.00 in fees. I don't have access to no-load funds in this account either.
I've contacted vanguard about switching the Simple IRA to them. and they say I have 2 options.
1) switch the entire company to them (4 people currently have simple IRA's but only 2 active full time employees). and they won't do this until Jan 1 at the start of the new IRS reporting period. their simple IRA can only contain vanguard funds, so I would have to sell all the stocks/funds in there currently, or...
2) transfer my current simple IRA assets to them and put it into a traditional IRA account (that way they can transfer my current stocks and mutual funds and not have to pay the 1% to current advisor to sell them for me). I should be able to do this tax/penalty free since Simple IRA is over 2 years old.
I also have a TD Ameritrade after-tax brokerage account. Should I possibly look at other brokerages other than Vanguard to transfer the simple IRA? I know a lot of people here talk about fidelity, schwab, TD ameritrade along with Vanguard.
Right now I think the best option would be to transfer current assets to a traditional IRA (so i can get the 23k cash put to work) and then just let my contributions from June to December sit in cash in the current Simple IRA. At end of the year transfer the Simple IRA to another brokerage where I can actually do the transactions myself and save the 1% fee.
what would you do in my shoes?
thanks in advance!
