Pre-Retirement Options

[Wolf359]

I always thought Fidelity had several no cost indexes, probably as a teaser to get you to move your money. Schwab's 500 is 2 basis points. So $10 thou of Schwab over Vanguard saves you two bucks a year, my proverbial ham sandwich. The Fidelity 500 would save you fifty cents over Schwab. Find some expert to handle your money and they can easily grab a few hundred off that same ten thousand.

Also if you look at the 10 year return, the difference between Schwab and Fidelity is about $212 on a 10k investment. Of course if you have 100k, that is $2120, etc. A couple quarters here, a few hundred there, and later on a few thousand, you're talking real money now.

Also isn't that the trick? Most professionally managed funds who try to beat the S&P 500 can't do it. Those are the professionals where 75% can't beat the index. The rare one is a Peter Lynch. The experts you're finding to mange your money don't even qualify to run their own multi billion dollar fund, how much success do you think you'll really have? You could be like Diogenes looking for an honest man to manage his finances.

And just to put it out there, the numbers I got was $37,662 for Fidelity and $37,450 for Schwab as of 11/30/2020. That's the results of 10k invested 10 years ago.

 

[Dave Hess]

Fidelity has a excellent website if you like to do some research. TD website is OK.
Vanguard has a very basic website if you want to research non Vanguard funds or stocks.


Off topic:
When my kids turned 18 I had opened up Roth IRAs at Vanguard and funded them the first year to get the snowball rolling....

My kids were like.... What’s an IRA ???
.

 

[doitmyself]

Also if you look at the 10 year return, the difference between Schwab and Fidelity is about $212 on a 10k investment. Of course if you have 100k, that is $2120, etc. A couple quarters here, a few hundred there, and later on a few thousand, you're talking real money now.

Also isn't that the trick? Most professionally managed funds who try to beat the S&P 500 can't do it. Those are the professionals where 75% can't beat the index. The rare one is a Peter Lynch. The experts you're finding to mange your money don't even qualify to run their own multi billion dollar fund, how much success do you think you'll really have? You could be like Diogenes looking for an honest man to manage his finances.

And just to put it out there, the numbers I got was $37,662 for Fidelity and $37,450 for Schwab as of 11/30/2020. That's the results of 10k invested 10 years ago.

Well, I'll contend again that one has to consider the whole picture. Wolf359 you are suggesting that focusing on proper choice of wealth management might result in a good chunk more money at retirement. You also might end up with much less if greed over shadows good decisions. How is a financial layperson going to figure this out? A person might feel much more comfortable using the choices presented by Schwab vs. Fidelity and there is something to be said about peace of mind over decades. My point is that you cannot just focus on earnings rate. For instance, I know people that are perfectly comfortable (risk averse) putting a portion of their portfolio in a "good" annuity because a guaranteed monthly paycheck trumps more earning power for them.

 

[Wolf359]

Well, I'll contend again that one has to consider the whole picture. Wolf359 you are suggesting that focusing on proper choice of wealth management might result in a good chunk more money at retirement. You also might end up with much less if greed over shadows good decisions. How is a financial layperson going to figure this out? A person might feel much more comfortable using the choices presented by Schwab vs. Fidelity and there is something to be said about peace of mind over decades. My point is that you cannot just focus on earnings rate. For instance, I know people that are perfectly comfortable (risk averse) putting a portion of their portfolio in a "good" annuity because a guaranteed monthly paycheck trumps more earning power for them.

I think you read more into what I posted than was there. All I was pointing out was that with the lower expense ratio, if you're going to buy an S&P 500 index fund, the Fidelity one would be the one to get.

My other point is that you can't just trust whatever a financial adviser says, the real superstars run the funds. Now you're thinking the beginner adviser is going to pick better funds or do better than those running the current funds?

 

[Pablo]

I think you are speaking of BOND FUNDS.

Buy bonds at reasonable prices and hold until maturity.

The tougher nut is actually finding reasonable bonds.

I had a meeting with my Fidelity advisor yesterday. She told me something I didn't know. Fidelity will create a bond portfolio, no charge, if you have $350K or more to dedicate to bonds, they will shop, ladder, etc - no charge. Even if in an IRA. Just create a new account and they do the rest. I am going to do this for sure.

On a side not I already rolled my 401K to my SD IRA.

 

[PandaBear]

If you are financially secure and don't need the money, probably just put in the lowest cost S&P 500 or other index fund that has the lowest risk.