Ham

[Mr. Tummy Mustache]

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[MDM]

1) Is it easy to set up an auto-pay into Vanguard?

Yes, if from an account under your control.  E.g., your checking account.

Like direct deposit.

That depends more on your employer's payroll software.  If it allows your net pay to go to multiple destinations, then probably yes.

2) Is it easy to take withdrawls?

Yes.

3) Is your Vanguard tax info available online soon after the first of the new year?

Depends what you mean by soon.  See https://personal.vanguard.com/us/insights/taxcenter/tax-forms-capital-gains.

[forummm]

MDM beat me to it, but: yes (auto-pull from a checking account), yes, and yes.

[tj]

What kidn of withdrawals do you want? If you sell you won't be able to buy back in for a certain number of days.

[Common sense]

No offense but if you are self employed vanguard sucks. I bought in to the whole vanguard kool aid and am now stuck with having to change to a different investing house because of it. Example one: I have a sep ira that was set up when I first started my business for simplicity reasons. Few years later I set up an i401k because I could save more pre tax with less "salary". This is where it all went wrong. When you have a i401k vanguard doesn't give you access to low cost admiral shares!?!?!?! You can have $1,000,000,000 invested and no low cost admiral shares. Wtf is that? I was sort of willing to eat this but then I discovered somwthing else that made it unpalatable. I wanted to roll my sep Ira into my i401k so that I could do a back door Roth. And they won't let me roll that over either!?!?!?! At that point I lost it and told them they will be losing my business and that they have already lost many of my friends business for similar reasons. So I'm switching to Schwab, who will let me do all of the above and have give you access to all the vanguard admiral share expense ratio etf's at $7 a trade. Or I can buy schwab's version of total stock index fund for free. The vanguard gal was very nice and said that my concerns are on the agenda for the company but these changes shouldn't be expected for at least 2 years.

So if you're going to be in a similar position give it second thoughts.

[TheAnonOne]

No offense but if you are self employed vanguard sucks. I bought in to the whole vanguard kool aid and am now stuck with having to change to a different investing house because of it. Example one: I have a sep ira that was set up when I first started my business for simplicity reasons. Few years later I set up an i401k because I could save more pre tax with less "salary". This is where it all went wrong. When you have a i401k vanguard doesn't give you access to low cost admiral shares!?!?!?! You can have $1,000,000,000 invested and no low cost admiral shares. Wtf is that? I was sort of willing to eat this but then I discovered somwthing else that made it unpalatable. I wanted to roll my sep Ira into my i401k so that I could do a back door Roth. And they won't let me roll that over either!?!?!?! At that point I lost it and told them they will be losing my business and that they have already lost many of my friends business for similar reasons. So I'm switching to Schwab, who will let me do all of the above and have give you access to all the vanguard admiral share expense ratio etf's at $7 a trade. Or I can buy schwab's version of total stock index fund for free. The vanguard gal was very nice and said that my concerns are on the agenda for the company but these changes shouldn't be expected for at least 2 years.

So if you're going to be in a similar position give it second thoughts.

Interesting and good to know if I switch into solo mode in the future.

[K-ice]

I love that term.

I just became a Vangaurdian this month  too.

I'm in Canada so I just bought some VXC within a direct investing bank  account. Not a Vanguard account but I think it counts ;)

[BlueHouse]

VTSAX has a $10,000 minimum.  I'm not planning on doing this, but hypothetically, if you dip below 10,000 for a month, would they charge the non-Admiral share fee for that month?

No they don't.  I have an energy fund with them where the Admiral limit is $50k and one good month sent my account just slightly above $50k.  That was many months ago and I haven't contributed to that account in a long time.   It's now worth $42K and has been below $50 for at least 6 months, but I'm still in the admiral fund.  I thought they'd kick me out after a while, but hasn't happened yet. 

[Bracken_Joy]

No offense but if you are self employed vanguard sucks. I bought in to the whole vanguard kool aid and am now stuck with having to change to a different investing house because of it. Example one: I have a sep ira that was set up when I first started my business for simplicity reasons. Few years later I set up an i401k because I could save more pre tax with less "salary". This is where it all went wrong. When you have a i401k vanguard doesn't give you access to low cost admiral shares!?!?!?! You can have $1,000,000,000 invested and no low cost admiral shares. Wtf is that? I was sort of willing to eat this but then I discovered somwthing else that made it unpalatable. I wanted to roll my sep Ira into my i401k so that I could do a back door Roth. And they won't let me roll that over either!?!?!?! At that point I lost it and told them they will be losing my business and that they have already lost many of my friends business for similar reasons. So I'm switching to Schwab, who will let me do all of the above and have give you access to all the vanguard admiral share expense ratio etf's at $7 a trade. Or I can buy schwab's version of total stock index fund for free. The vanguard gal was very nice and said that my concerns are on the agenda for the company but these changes shouldn't be expected for at least 2 years.

So if you're going to be in a similar position give it second thoughts.

Hmm. Very good to know. DH's SEP IRA is with Vanguard.

[WorkingToBeFIREd]

No offense but if you are self employed vanguard sucks. I bought in to the whole vanguard kool aid and am now stuck with having to change to a different investing house because of it. Example one: I have a sep ira that was set up when I first started my business for simplicity reasons. Few years later I set up an i401k because I could save more pre tax with less "salary". This is where it all went wrong. When you have a i401k vanguard doesn't give you access to low cost admiral shares!?!?!?! You can have $1,000,000,000 invested and no low cost admiral shares. Wtf is that? I was sort of willing to eat this but then I discovered somwthing else that made it unpalatable. I wanted to roll my sep Ira into my i401k so that I could do a back door Roth. And they won't let me roll that over either!?!?!?! At that point I lost it and told them they will be losing my business and that they have already lost many of my friends business for similar reasons. So I'm switching to Schwab, who will let me do all of the above and have give you access to all the vanguard admiral share expense ratio etf's at $7 a trade. Or I can buy schwab's version of total stock index fund for free. The vanguard gal was very nice and said that my concerns are on the agenda for the company but these changes shouldn't be expected for at least 2 years.

So if you're going to be in a similar position give it second thoughts.

Hmm. Very good to know. DH's SEP IRA is with Vanguard.

Not sure about pricing for Schwab, but I went with the self-employed 401k at Fidelity for exactly the reasons outlined above.  I really wanted to stick with Vanguard and could have lived with Investor shares if I had to, but not being able to do a reverse rollover from an IRA was a deal breaker.  Fidelity will allow you to do a reverse rollover (or plan-to-plan exchange) and offers Spartan Advantage funds which are basically the same as Admiral.  There are no fees at Fidelity to manage the plan and no trade commissions, although I think they charge you $50 if you close the account completely.

Vanguard has the rest of my money, but they dropped the ball on their i401k product.

[Common sense]

No offense but if you are self employed vanguard sucks. I bought in to the whole vanguard kool aid and am now stuck with having to change to a different investing house because of it. Example one: I have a sep ira that was set up when I first started my business for simplicity reasons. Few years later I set up an i401k because I could save more pre tax with less "salary". This is where it all went wrong. When you have a i401k vanguard doesn't give you access to low cost admiral shares!?!?!?! You can have $1,000,000,000 invested and no low cost admiral shares. Wtf is that? I was sort of willing to eat this but then I discovered somwthing else that made it unpalatable. I wanted to roll my sep Ira into my i401k so that I could do a back door Roth. And they won't let me roll that over either!?!?!?! At that point I lost it and told them they will be losing my business and that they have already lost many of my friends business for similar reasons. So I'm switching to Schwab, who will let me do all of the above and have give you access to all the vanguard admiral share expense ratio etf's at $7 a trade. Or I can buy schwab's version of total stock index fund for free. The vanguard gal was very nice and said that my concerns are on the agenda for the company but these changes shouldn't be expected for at least 2 years.

So if you're going to be in a similar position give it second thoughts.

Hmm. Very good to know. DH's SEP IRA is with Vanguard.

Not sure about pricing for Schwab, but I went with the self-employed 401k at Fidelity for exactly the reasons outlined above.  I really wanted to stick with Vanguard and could have lived with Investor shares if I had to, but not being able to do a reverse rollover from an IRA was a deal breaker.  Fidelity will allow you to do a reverse rollover (or plan-to-plan exchange) and offers Spartan Advantage funds which are basically the same as Admiral.  There are no fees at Fidelity to manage the plan and no trade commissions, although I think they charge you $50 if you close the account completely.

Vanguard has the rest of my money, but they dropped the ball on their i401k product.

100% agree. And it's really sad because their basic premise and company mission statement are so good. But big time fail on their i401k product. Man.

Why'd you decide fidelity instead of Schwab? I'll have to look at their Spartan funds.

[WorkingToBeFIREd]

100% agree. And it's really sad because their basic premise and company mission statement are so good. But big time fail on their i401k product. Man.

Why'd you decide fidelity instead of Schwab? I'll have to look at their Spartan funds.

I'll be honest, I didn't research a lot of options in detail, just starting Googling around for self-employed 401k and kept coming up with positive reviews for Fidelity's product.  Fidelity had the cost structure I wanted, share class/expenses I was after, and a branch nearby, so combined with good customer service the 2-3 times I called them asking questions and positive feedback on the web, that was the direction I went.  My father-in-law also has most of his accounts at Fidelity and has had good experiences with them.

The only "downside" is that I have to mail them a check or stop by the branch to make the deposit into my 401k, either for employer or employee contributions, as they don't have an electronic transfer process.  If I had another account with Fidelity that they could sweep funds from, I could do the contribution with just a phone call, but as this is my only Fidelity account, manual deposits are the only way.  Since I only make a contribution monthly, it's not a big deal...I plan a trip to the branch and combine other nearby errands.

Reading my posts above, I might sound like a corporate shill, but I have no affiliation with Fidelity outside of being a satisfied customer.  :)

[Common sense]

100% agree. And it's really sad because their basic premise and company mission statement are so good. But big time fail on their i401k product. Man.

Why'd you decide fidelity instead of Schwab? I'll have to look at their Spartan funds.

I'll be honest, I didn't research a lot of options in detail, just starting Googling around for self-employed 401k and kept coming up with positive reviews for Fidelity's product.  Fidelity had the cost structure I wanted, share class/expenses I was after, and a branch nearby, so combined with good customer service the 2-3 times I called them asking questions and positive feedback on the web, that was the direction I went.  My father-in-law also has most of his accounts at Fidelity and has had good experiences with them.

The only "downside" is that I have to mail them a check or stop by the branch to make the deposit into my 401k, either for employer or employee contributions, as they don't have an electronic transfer process.  If I had another account with Fidelity that they could sweep funds from, I could do the contribution with just a phone call, but as this is my only Fidelity account, manual deposits are the only way.  Since I only make a contribution monthly, it's not a big deal...I plan a trip to the branch and combine other nearby errands.

Reading my posts above, I might sound like a corporate shill, but I have no affiliation with Fidelity outside of being a satisfied customer.  :)

On my researching between schwab and fidelity, all the reviews stated that they were satisfied with both by and large.  That's a little annoying not being able to tx funds electronically but there is a schwab branch a mile away from me so I guess I can't complain too much.  I never took you as a corporate shill :-)  thanks for your help.

Matt