Author Topic: Keeping DFA funds?  (Read 3838 times)

makstache

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Keeping DFA funds?
« on: March 27, 2015, 12:05:45 PM »
My wife's leftover college fund is in a Charles Schwab brokerage account, and it is managed by an advisory company. The money is invested in DGEIX. Dimensional Funds are only offered through their approved advisors. The advisor connected with this account currently charges .75% a year. My question is, if I sever ties with the advisor, will I be forced to sell my funds, or will I be able to keep them?

matchewed

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Re: Keeping DFA funds?
« Reply #1 on: March 27, 2015, 12:10:12 PM »
To my knowledge you own what you own. They can't just kick your money out.

Not sure why you want to keep that fund but whatever.

forummm

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Re: Keeping DFA funds?
« Reply #2 on: March 27, 2015, 12:33:37 PM »
I so wish I could be paid obscene amounts to "manage" people's money by shoving it into a mutual fund and never looking at it again. What leeches these "advisors" are.

Frankies Girl

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Re: Keeping DFA funds?
« Reply #3 on: March 27, 2015, 12:43:54 PM »

If that fund in your wife's account isn't an advisory exclusive, then you would not be required to sell it off to shift the account to self-managed. (but it does seem like you could recreate that fund easily using Vanguard index funds).

If it's just that she had an adviser open her account and now is listed as her personal adviser on her account, I would just contact Schwab and let them know you (or your wife should since it's her account) want to take over, and want to remove the adviser and their company from the account completely, and what all that would involve. Do not contact the adviser directly because they'll probably just try to talk you out of it. ;)


« Last Edit: March 27, 2015, 12:49:53 PM by Frankies Girl »

PathtoFIRE

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Re: Keeping DFA funds?
« Reply #4 on: March 27, 2015, 12:47:47 PM »
Absolutely you can keep those funds. We were in the exact same situation, holding DGEIX at Fidelity, as well as a few tax-exempt bond funds, managed by an advisor. I sold off the bonds and enough of the DGEIX holdings in order to net out the gains and losses, and transferred that money to Vanguard. That still left me with a little under $100k in DGEIX at Fidelity, which I haven't touched and probably won't until 1) we see significant market drop to minimize capital gains taxes or 2) I retire and sell off what I can while staying within the 15% bracket to get 0% long term capital gains.

You will have to decide how you want dividends handled. I initially turned off automatic reinvestment, and would send them to Vanguard, but eventually decided to turn reinvestment back on as there were a few times where I was slow to make the transfers out and to Vanguard (and I think maximum time exposure to the market outweighs the relatively small ER difference, which is around 0.33, 6.5x VTSAX), but it does have some advantages, I can't purchase myself except by dividend reinvestment, and I also keep it around in order to compare the rest of my holdings to it, to help persuade my wife that firing the advisor was a good choice. I'll admit, not great reasons, and like I said, once timing allows me to dump significant portions of it, I will, but keeping dividends reinvested just made my life easier all around with little real downside.