I’m in the process of moving to ETrade. And it’s not perfect. Two odd things. One, if they dislike your paperwork for some reason, nobody calls/emails to tell you. You have to call them during which you get a readout they may or may not make sense (I suspect back office outsourcing to those with sharp pencils and poor English). Second, their chat and secure message links are inoperable, I assume by design.After reviewing the options I am making the move to e-trade. Roth is important to me so that effectively narrowed the options to Schwab or E-Trade and from what I've heard, E-trade has a more modern interface as well as more flexible no-cost investment options. The Morgan Stanley ownership has me a little nervous but i can always move it again if I need to...
I'll probably move am IRA with it so I don't have to maintain accounts in 2 locations. I guess Vanguard probably doesn't care about the loss of business but it's hard not to be disappointed with them due to this decision.
However, if you dial the number on the first page of the application, you get directly to the small-business retirement desk. And those folks are helpful.
One more tip: you must apply twice, adoption agreements and all, for a Roth and 401k. That yields separate accounts which you must “divine” through the forgotten userid process on the web. Again, nobody calls to tell you the application was processed and your user is available. Once you have set up both accounts, you can call to have them merged into one of the two userids. The not-yet-updated to SECURE 2.0 prototype plan is from…wait for it…Ascensus.
The site is fast though it still shows its age. Another thing to keep in mind if you must file form 5500: ETrade doesn’t have an answer for what kind of yearly statement they will send you when you ask. It may be that the reports Vanguard used to send won’t be available at all. Those reports were the best thing about the Vanguard platform — for which I otherwise have nothing but complaints after being on it since 2012.
Still, anything is better than Vanguard which has abandoned Bogle principles completely.
Statistics: Posted by yobyot — Sat May 04, 2024 7:32 am — Replies 511 — Views 44649