Hi y'all! I'm hoping to get some advice on my retirement plan, or maybe just a little encouragement to be braver in my investing endevors. I've been reading MMM articles for the last year, but mostly with the lens of working on reducing my expenses. Now that I've done that, I'd like to start investing. Here's the basic info...
Annual salary ~70,000 (I teach and have some nice side gigs. I think my base salary is more around 63,000)
I started paying into a 403b at my last job, and ended up with two different annuities capped around 4%. This was really the only option from that employer, and I am just now starting to understand that it is only meant to keep up with inflation. I'm 32 and should clearly be in more aggressive stuff. The total in these accounts is ~20,000.
When I quit that job and moved, I stopped contributing in order to pay for graduate school. I'll have completed my Ed D three years from now, but since reading MMM, I save enough to pay out of pocket with some left over to start contributing again. I'll graduate with no loans. (Thanks MMM community!!)
I also pay into a pension plan, but I haven't been paying much attention to that since I plan on taking a new career path when I complete my doctorate.
Anyway, my current employer offers many, many 403b options, including Vanguard. I think it's probably worth taking the penalty fees on the annuities to move them to an index fund with Vanguard. I was working up the nerve to open the account, and then got sucked into working with a commissioned finance guy from our district office. He is trying to convince me that Morningstar is a better option, even though they charge a management fee, and of course, he will be getting a commission to help me roll the funds over.
So here are my questions:
1) If most people on this forum are using Vanguard, what would be the reason to pay management fees to Morningstar instead?
2) Is there any reason I need a liscenced finance guy to move my annuities to either Vanguard or Morningstar? I guess my fear is that I'll do it wrong and end up paying more fees/penalties than needed. The finance guy made it clear that I will be paying a fee, but that it's worth it.
3) With a 403b, will I be able to choose a mix of vtsax and vbtlx? Or when I get the account opened, does it become more complicated than that? I feel like this particular lack of knowledge is what keeps me from doing this myself and why I've put it off.
4) Any links to MMM posts I should be checking out? I tried checking out Bogleheads but still need more time to look it over.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for reading this far!