Switching brokerages betterment to vanguard - need advice

[Buckley123]

Hello, I'm a first time poster here, but have been following this blog for a long time. I have $50k invested in betterment, divided into 3 different asset classes. I think they are all too conservative and would like to move them to more stock-heavy allocations. I also am unhappy with the advisory fee from betterment. I have about $100k invested with vanguard in vtsax and am happy with how that's going. I want to cash out my betterment account and invest it all into my existing vanguard vtsax, but is there something that I haven't considered? I looked at the tax implications, and if I cashed out of betterment today it would be at an $1800 loss, so I would not have to pay any long or short term capital gains. But is it better to keep my money where it is? Am I at risk of losing any money if I cash out of betterment and immediately move it into vanguard? Is there something I haven't considered??? Does it matter if I cash out and transfer to vanguard now (when I'm at a loss and tax implications are low), or should I wait until the market is doing better....does that even matter?

[FLBiker]

I've never used Betterment, so I'm not sure if they have any account closure or transfer out fees, but generally speaking, I would say there's no reason to wait.  The main "cost" would typically be taxes, but since you have a lost that's a non-issue.

Typically, if I'm moving investments from one brokerage to another, I will do a "transfer in kind" which means I don't actually sell the investments, I just move them from one place to another.  The advantages of this are twofold.  First, it's not a taxable event.  Second, if my transfer gets stuck in limbo, I'm not running a risk of the price changing dramatically while I'm out of the market.

I don't know how Betterment investments are structured, so I'm not sure if in kind transfers are possible.  If you're worried about prices changing mid-transfer, though, you could explore this.

[EliteZags]

seems Betterment is specialty funds so the transfer would into similarly structured (but not identical) Vanguard index funds thus providing loss harvesting benefit

[Scandium]

Sounds like selling at a loss for the tax credit could be a good move. Just note that you wait 30 days for the wash sales rules before you rebuy
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/w/washsalerule.asp