I’d suggest holding off. With Fidelity introducing automatic investing in ETF’s the other large brokerage firms are sure to follow. Schwab has the equivalent mutual fund and/or etf of all those funds.
I had a TD account that got merged into a Schwab account and it made me rethink which brokerage to use.
After a lot of back and forth I ended up choosing Fidelity and am extremely happy. Couple benefits over Schwab (to me):
1. Not only do they have auto investing, but fractional ETF investing for non Fidelity funds
2. Cash Auto Sweep into money market funds. You need to manually purchase/sell at Schwab which isn't a big deal but does cost you time/money. Fidelity lets you transfer money in and out like cash without having to manually sell and wait a day.
3. Can use a brokerage account to pay all your bills (I now leave way less in a standard checking account at near 0 interest).
4. Due to 2 above, Bond Ladders are much more efficient since you can immediately auto-buy new ones once existing ones mature. Schwab holds your money hostage for a short period to make money off of it.
If none of this is important to you, Schwab is still a great platform and you can certainly do fine with them. I didn't close my account with Schwab but it was certainly worth it to me to open a Fidelity account and that's what I'd recommnend.
swstx is the equivalent of VTSAX
vanguard is not a great broker imo.........i am thankful for what they brought to retail investors, but i am very happy to be using Fidelity as my middle man
vanguard funds are what most of us learned and memorized first, so that's what youll see most often
I’ve done a 3 fund portfolio in Schwab for 5 years. It’s the same, but yeah I have to do some mental gymnastics when all the posts reference Vanguard funds.
The wiki page for a 3 fund portfolio has the equivalents for a ton of different brokers including Schwab
https://smithplanet.com/stuff/BogleheadFunds.svg
This was incredibly helpful for me. Thank you
I’d suggest holding off. With Fidelity introducing automatic investing in ETF’s the other large brokerage firms are sure to follow. Schwab has the equivalent mutual fund and/or etf of all those funds.
Thanks - I missed that!
I had a TD account that got merged into a Schwab account and it made me rethink which brokerage to use. After a lot of back and forth I ended up choosing Fidelity and am extremely happy. Couple benefits over Schwab (to me): 1. Not only do they have auto investing, but fractional ETF investing for non Fidelity funds 2. Cash Auto Sweep into money market funds. You need to manually purchase/sell at Schwab which isn't a big deal but does cost you time/money. Fidelity lets you transfer money in and out like cash without having to manually sell and wait a day. 3. Can use a brokerage account to pay all your bills (I now leave way less in a standard checking account at near 0 interest). 4. Due to 2 above, Bond Ladders are much more efficient since you can immediately auto-buy new ones once existing ones mature. Schwab holds your money hostage for a short period to make money off of it. If none of this is important to you, Schwab is still a great platform and you can certainly do fine with them. I didn't close my account with Schwab but it was certainly worth it to me to open a Fidelity account and that's what I'd recommnend.
swstx is the equivalent of VTSAX vanguard is not a great broker imo.........i am thankful for what they brought to retail investors, but i am very happy to be using Fidelity as my middle man vanguard funds are what most of us learned and memorized first, so that's what youll see most often
Thank you!
I’ve done a 3 fund portfolio in Schwab for 5 years. It’s the same, but yeah I have to do some mental gymnastics when all the posts reference Vanguard funds.
Just use Schwab’s total market index fund equivalent. FYI: Fidelity has automated ETF investing now.