I'm so confused by my new Vanguard account

[mozambeaks]

I managed a 401(k) rollover for my husband into a Vanguard traditional IRA. The funds went through and have landed in a money market settlement account labeled a Traditional IRA Brokerage Account. And I can't for the life of me figure out how to move the money into stocks and bonds! HELP?!? Why is this website not intuitive at all?

[nereo]

I managed a 401(k) rollover for my husband into a Vanguard traditional IRA. The funds went through and have landed in a money market settlement account labeled a Traditional IRA Brokerage Account. And I can't for the life of me figure out how to move the money into stocks and bonds! HELP?!? Why is this website not intuitive at all?

It's going to be ok! 
Easiest thing to do is call their concierge service and ask them for help - they will help you navigate through the website and buy/sell what you want.  Because it's all in a IRA brokerage account it will be non-taxable events, so long as you don't withdraw any funds.

The reason why your money has landed into a Traditional IRA Brokerage account is because with the rollover you have kept the same holdings that you had with your 401(k).  the only difference is that Vanguard is now the brokerage, and not whoever your 401(k) was managed by.  Unless you really like your 401(k) holdings and Vanguard offers nothing similar at equal or lower cost I'd recommend selling off those holdings and buying whichever Vanguard fund(s) fits your AA.

Does that make sense?

[RH]

Call up Vanguard. They will be happy to help.

[Trifle]

Yes, just call them.  It's pretty easy though, and you'll get used to the way the site looks.  From the account summary page, where you see your balance in the MM fund, there's a tab on the right that says "Transact".  If you click on that, one of the options is "Buy Vanguard Funds."  Once you know what you want to invest in, that's the path you take.

[Sibley]

I've had an account for years and I still call them for everything I need to do. Their website is weird.

[haflander]

I went through this exact same process a couple months ago. Even though the $ has shown up in the settlement account, the process may not be totally over. You can't move that $ into stocks or bonds until the transaction says "final" or "complete" or similar. If the transaction is still "pending," even though it has shown up in the settlement account, then you can't move that $ into other funds quite yet. If the $ showed up a matter of days ago, then I think that is the issue. If the $ has been in the settlement account for a month, then that's a different matter and Idk, call Vanguard as has been mentioned.

This is all with the huge caveat that I'm a new Vanguard member as well, and by no means an expert.

[BicycleB]

Recently transferred some money into a Vanguard account. My transfer used a "settlement account" too.

For me, the investments in the old account were sold before transfer, turning them into cash (electronic cash). The cash was transferred to the settlement account; that's the transfer where the money went from one company to the other. Like @halfander says, it took a few days (a week?) for the transfer transaction to be completed. Once the transfer was complete, I was then able to use the Vanguard website to buy shares in the mutual fund of my choice. During that purchase, the money went "from" the settlement account and "to" the chosen mutual fund. This purchase happened within the new Vanguard account (in your case, I assume it would be within the new Traditional IRA brokerage account).

PS. Funny screen name!

[rantk81]

Yeah, use Vanguard for my backdoor roth transactions, because their site makes it easier to do backdoor roths (and they actually do the paperwork/tax-forms correctly for this, unlike other brokers I wont mention.)  But yeah, their website looks like something out of 1997, and is not well laid out IMO.

[FIREstache]

In addition to "transact", you can also go to "my accounts" and "buy and sell".