February of this year I set up a 457 retirement account with CalSTRS Pension2 (Voya), but recently I was informed that for $50/yr I could move 95% of that 457 money to a TD Ameritrade self-directed brokerage account. The TD acct provides access to more Vanguard funds and I think it means I dodge the additional .25% administrative fee that CalSTRS Pension2 charges on the funds they offer.
The TD SDBA is a "mutual fund only" account, so ETFs aren't an option to buy. Initially I thought that meant I was going to have to pay a $25 fee per buy(according to my plan's rules), but a rep over the phone told me I could set up a "systematic mutual fund purchase" to avoid subsequent $25 charges. I set up the automated purchase to use 100% of the available balance to buy a target-date fund on the 15th of each month. We'll see how it goes, but hopefully this info helps others.
The only issue I'm having is that CalSTRS P2/Voya won't automatically fund the SDBA, so I need to manually initiate the fund transfer each month... anyone else dealt with this? I may call back to see if I get a different answer from a different rep.
