In regards to the last sentence you wrote, it is clear that you do not believe that you do need to be in more than one brokerage for diversification purposes.
Craig Rowland's book definitely emphasized using more than one.
Vinny
dualstow wrote: ↑Thu Sep 12, 2019 9:12 am Two.
I only meant to have Vanguard, but they weren’t doing solo 401k’s when I set mine up, so I used Fidelity for that. I had a rough beginning with Fidelity, but then it smoothed out. Friendly service at their physical branches. There was one guy one year who took my annual contribution out of my hand, processed it and tossed the receipt to me without a word, but that was one guy.
Vanguard certainly has growing pains. I had good service over the phone and online for the most part.
+ I had some directly held shares of this and that from when I was a kid, and Vanguard made it easy to transfer those over.
+ I got out of a smaller brokerage that I should have never been in. That was also from when I was young and didn’t have control over my investments. Vanguard got that done with no problems.
- I was disappointed in the beneficiary thing detailed by mathjak above. My dad and I had a joint account from my childhood, and for me it had never mattered that his name was attached. One day, I noticed that my wife’s name was no longer mentioned as my beneficiary. Or, I may have learned it when mathjak mentioned it in the past.
Vanguard had never told me about it. I had to ask them. And, almost my entire savings was in this joint account. We had to jump through some hoops to get the account in my name only so i could restore my wife as the named beneficiary. Not the end of the world, but...they should have told me.
- A few other headaches. No one’s perfect.
I do like that Vanguard is like a co-op where every shareholder is kind of a co-owner. I think about that when I buy shares of a corporate bond fund with a purchase fee. Fidelity, as good as they are, are not like that. I remember asking them how much money I had to have in my account to get free trades like I do at Vanguard (US$2 if I run out of free trades each year). The answer: they don’t have different levels. Everyone has to pay for trading.
I like both firms and would not want to diversify any further. Even one firm would be enough for me, plus a checking account elsewhere.