Author Topic: How many have over 75% of their nestegg in one basket (Vanguard?)  (Read 3007 times)

BTDretire

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I often wonder if I'm making a mistake have 75% on my net worth invested in Vanguard, mostly VTSAX.
 Anyone else  doing the same, whether it's Vanguard or some other company?

doingfine

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Re: How many have over 75% of their nestegg in one basket (Vanguard?)
« Reply #1 on: July 16, 2019, 09:21:26 AM »
There really isn't any substantial risk of having your assets entirely with one custodian. If that custodian folds, your assets will be transferred to another. Our 401k was with Wachovia when they went under in 2008. The transfer was pretty much invisible to us.


FIREstache

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Re: How many have over 75% of their nestegg in one basket (Vanguard?)
« Reply #3 on: July 16, 2019, 12:20:11 PM »
I often wonder if I'm making a mistake have 75% on my net worth invested in Vanguard, mostly VTSAX.
 Anyone else  doing the same, whether it's Vanguard or some other company?

Net worth includes my home, which isn't invested in anything other than itself, so speaking of only my stash instead, I don't think I've ever been more than 65% invested in Vanguard and am closer to 57% today. 

RyanAtTanagra

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Re: How many have over 75% of their nestegg in one basket (Vanguard?)
« Reply #4 on: July 16, 2019, 02:01:28 PM »
I've been concerned about this as well, not so much fear of the company going under, but of identity theft and having the funds siphoned off.  As a target before, I know how much of a nightmare that can be, and that was back when I had <$0 net worth.  So I recently decided to transfer my IRAs to another company, keeping my taxable account where it is, which distributes things fairly well between the two.  There's no cost to doing so, and minimal additional complication/overhead.

Mr. Green

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Re: How many have over 75% of their nestegg in one basket (Vanguard?)
« Reply #5 on: July 16, 2019, 04:13:19 PM »
Having funds with multiple custodians is a real PITA. As we begin our Roth conversions that would mean both a traditional IRA and Roth IRA with each custodian potentially. Then it's that much harder to keep track of which places you want to do the conversion in a given year. We have all our accounts with Vanguard except a tIRA for my wife, which is at Fidelity. The only reason that account is there is because it was way easier to roll over her company 401k with Fidelity in house. We'll be moving that tIRA to Vanguard by the end of the year because she already has a tIRA And Roth IRA with Vanguard and I don't want to manage a bunch of extra accounts during the Roth conversion process.

DadzillaGorilla

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Re: How many have over 75% of their nestegg in one basket (Vanguard?)
« Reply #6 on: July 17, 2019, 01:13:25 AM »
I have about 60% in stocks, and all with one provider but I have it invested in 4 different portfolios to try and spread the risk of individual fund performance. In reality the funds are all fairly well diversified but it is no extra work for me to deposit to 4 and they cover worldwide equities, and gives me a little bit of choice around where I want to be invested.

MonkeyJenga

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Re: How many have over 75% of their nestegg in one basket (Vanguard?)
« Reply #7 on: July 17, 2019, 01:44:37 AM »
I've got 95% at Vanguard. I know some people worry about things like that, but ehhhh if Vanguard's going down, we're all going down.

SwordGuy

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Re: How many have over 75% of their nestegg in one basket (Vanguard?)
« Reply #8 on: July 17, 2019, 10:31:23 AM »
I've got 95% at Vanguard. I know some people worry about things like that, but ehhhh if Vanguard's going down, we're all going down.

Vanguard could get hacked or we could discover their disaster recovery plan wasn't up to snuff.


At the very least it could disrupt things for months.


I think it's prudent to split our funds between two different providers.


I can tell you that the average system admin and network admin staff aren't up to snuff and neither are most management who plan disaster recovery scenarios.  (And the ones who even TRY to plan are the cream of the crop.)

MonkeyJenga

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Re: How many have over 75% of their nestegg in one basket (Vanguard?)
« Reply #9 on: July 17, 2019, 12:46:37 PM »
I've got 95% at Vanguard. I know some people worry about things like that, but ehhhh if Vanguard's going down, we're all going down.

Vanguard could get hacked or we could discover their disaster recovery plan wasn't up to snuff.


At the very least it could disrupt things for months.


I think it's prudent to split our funds between two different providers.


I can tell you that the average system admin and network admin staff aren't up to snuff and neither are most management who plan disaster recovery scenarios.  (And the ones who even TRY to plan are the cream of the crop.)


The person responsible for disaster recovery at a previous job got fired after Hurricane Sandy. My fun introduction to realizing lots of people don't know what they're doing.

I have enough money in the other 5% to live off of for months. Two checking accounts, multiple credit cards with high limits, an HSA if I really need it. So a temporary issue would be okay. Hacked and all my money's gone? Yeah that would suck. Hm.

Uturn

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Re: How many have over 75% of their nestegg in one basket (Vanguard?)
« Reply #10 on: July 17, 2019, 12:55:02 PM »
I can tell you that the average system admin and network admin staff aren't up to snuff and neither are most management who plan disaster recovery scenarios.  (And the ones who even TRY to plan are the cream of the crop.)

My boss at a previous company, a very large health organization, one rung below the C Suite.  "If you built a good network, why would you need to test a failure?"

Fishindude

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Re: How many have over 75% of their nestegg in one basket (Vanguard?)
« Reply #11 on: July 17, 2019, 02:55:40 PM »
Diversification is never a bad idea.
Giant companies occasionally go belly up.

DaMa

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Re: How many have over 75% of their nestegg in one basket (Vanguard?)
« Reply #12 on: July 18, 2019, 07:12:00 AM »
I have 30% Vanguard, 40% Fidelity, 20% pension, 10% CDs.  All the Fidelity funds are from work 401ks, and I though I'd move them to Vanguard a couple of times.  But I'm lazy.  I guess I'm diversified in that way...of course all the funds are in VTSAX and FSKAX.