Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Scottrade versus Vanguard for my IRA

Well, I still don't have my IRA. I am just thinking if I should open a Vanguard account for that or use my existing Scottrade account.
Suppose I buy a Index fund & put $100 per month; that would mean
Initial cost = $3000 + 100*12 = $4200

Vanguard expenses
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$10 + $10 = $20

Scottrade
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$17 buy + $2 per transaction so that's $17 + 2*12 = $41

Of course if I do 'Systematic reinvestment' not every month but every 3 months; that would lower the expenses since I would have to pay 2*4 = $8 instead of $24. But then I'm keeping that $100 in my bank instead of letting it grow through this index fund.

But if I use Scottrade, I have the advantage of putting Stocks in my IRA & having just 1 investment broker for my IRA & taxable investments (of course I have Fidelity for my 401K)

I think I should not be worrying so much about $41 versus $20 in fees; Scottrade looks like a good option for my IRA. I should do this by end of February

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'd recommend Vanguard if you're going to be putting it in mutual funds. They have a nice array of mutual funds and their fees (expense ratio) is low.

Anonymous said...

I should have also mentioned that even though Vanguard charges 20, once you have more than 10000 in the fund you'll be charged less.

I went through the exact same dilemma last year and finally decided to go with Vanguard. With mutual funds its easy to setup AIP's and hence I just have a weekly contribution without worries.

santosh said...

time to get back to blogging? :)