@mstee
You’re welcome. I think that I feel older because raising my child has worn me out so I admire those who are able to go more than one round! 
About IRA conversions to Roths, I’ll add this financial planning article that I had bookmarked in case it is any more useful than all the other ones. Sometimes reading the same information for the nth time but written by another person helps.
Ah, the magic 8-ball remains cloudy!
Just catching up on the last 10 days of this thread. Intrigued by the discussion about Vanguard, Fidelity and Schwab. We have had most of our money and investments in schwab for the past 30 years just because…I appreciate the online banking and the ease of doing things but have found the advising unimpressive. Dh and I met with our assigned advisor just twice but we didn’t yield any great info and, when our kids turned 21, dh and I gave them a bit of stock in a couple companies aligned with their interests and had them meet with someone at Schwab to help them better understand their portfolios; were not impressed then either. I know we have a fidelity account as dh has one from as a result of retirement investment opportunities with prior employers. I don’t think we have anything with Vanguard. This may be a naive question but would it make sense to meet with Vanguard and Fidelity to see if we’d get better advising and be no worse off with regard to our free checking, free ATM withdrawls, no fee international ATM withdrawls, etc? While I really appreciate these benefits, I know they’re a drop in the bucket if we ended up getting advice that modified our investment strategy in a positive way.
Personally, I like the advice from Bogleheads.org, as it is pretty consistent and they are NOT out to make any money off anyone. There are a lot of good wikis on the site that have a lot of good background info & a reading list. Basically, they recommend your age in bond index funds ((or age - 10 in bonds) and the rest in broad market index fund. They advise having as low annual fees as possible (generally under 20 basis points or 0.20%). They recommend NO active management–passive has done much better on average than any active fund and NO load fees.
If you are interested and can get free consulttaion from Fidelity and Vanguard, you could listen to see if they have any advice you find helpful, but the above is it in a nutshell.
We have used the Vanguard Flagship services financial plan for years, as a check-up, rather than a means for getting advice that was going to generate a lot of trades. When the results come each year, I have typed them into another file, so I can see a historical picture of our financial plans year after year. I have been pleased with the knowledge of the planners and with the level of service. That said, they told me at our last meeting that this would be the last year that each of our investments could be input into the system, and in the future the inputs would be simplified into somewhat homogeneous categories. So I cannot comment on whether I will like next year’s offering, but I have been pleased with the past service. The financial plan is free if you have a certain level of assets with Vanguard.
I highly recommend them.
@collage1, I’m a big fan of Vanguard, but I don’t know if they do any of the “free checking, free ATM withdrawal, etc.” stuff. Perhaps they do. What they consistently do is have low cost funds, with no shareholders other than the fund owners to worry about. Some Fidelity funds (eg, Spartan) are as low, some Schwab ETFs are lower, but for the most part, Vanguard is the low cost leader.
We are Vanguard Flagship customers, so we can get some free stuff, but that’s not why I’m there. We can get some free estate planning, and I might take them up on it, but usually I only interact with their web site.
If we were to change advisors, would we have to technically sell all our holdings then buy them back with the new advisor?
@hayden, it depends on what your investments are. Often, in taxable accounts, they can be transferred “in kind.” If they are held in tax-advantaged accounts, you can sell and buy without capital gains concerns, so that’s easy unless (heaven forbid) you have front or back loads – and if you have them, you MUST fire your adviser.
ETA: any of the 3 firms discussed here can advise on efficient ways to move assets to them. They are happy to do the work of requesting transfers; usually you send them your most recent statement and they can take it from there.
I have accounts at Fidelity and Vanguard but kept the Schwab ATM debit card as it is the best free ATM card out there. I just keep enough money in the Schwab checking account for ATM withdrawal uses.
I like Fidelity because I like to speak with my rep face to face couple times a year and they have given me good customer service when I needed them. I am trying to divert more funds to Vanguard for passive investing because overall their expenses are lower than Fidelity in index funds.
@collage1
We have Vanguard, Fidelity and Schwab (H’s group retirement plan).
If you prefer to have a brokerage account, I think that Fidelity and Schwab mat be the way to go. I don’t even know if Vanguard offers brokerage services for individual stock trading.
If you want low-cost index funds from the company that pioneered index funds, Vanguard is the way to go. As mentioned above, Vanguard offers Flagship services (which include investment consultations) but there are asset amounts that you have to meet (I don’t recall what they are). Also, if you have large enough balances in your mutual funds, Vanguard offers “Admiral” shares which carry even lower costs than its “Investor” shares. Vanguard does not offer any type of retail “banking” and there are no bricks and mortar branches. Fidelity and Schwab both do.
Fidelity offers investment consultations also.
Also, I got these books to get our 25-year-old graduate student niece started on personal finance:
http://www.amazon.com/Jonathan-Clements-Money-Guide-2015/dp/150246361X/ref=tmm_pap_title_0#
(Clements used to write the Personal Finance columns for the WSJ and he is back after a stint elsewhere.)
I know books are a bit out of style these days, but beginners can become overwhelmed by too much information by relying on websites. Both books have reminded me of the fundamentals I try to follow.
Just a thought: as you have 30 years of investment performance at Schwab, you might compare them to the S&P 500 benchmark to see how well you have done with hindsight. Depending on how you come out, you can evaluate how you want to proceed, given your personal situation. That’s what I do with our portfolio each year.
Also, make sure that you take into account your tax consequences if you choose to move your investments. But remember also that the tax bite might be worth incurring if you end up better invested elsewhere. You can use losses from your lesser-performing investments to offset your better-performing ones. I have been trying to do this to consolidate small taxable accounts from 20 years ago.
For the record, Vanguard does have brokerage accounts which allow you to trade stocks and bonds. That’s not their bread and butter, but it is where we hold our only non-employer stock (Berkshire Hathaway).
You can buy Vanguard funds through Fidelity. They seem to be Investor class rather than Admiral class, though, so a little bit higher expense. You can also get Vanguard ETFs, although there is a small commission ($8/trade I think).
I checked Fidelity’s 500 Index fund. The Spartan class ($2500 minimum) has an expense ratio of 0.095%, and the Advantage class ($10,000 minimum) is 0.05%, so I’m not sure I see any advantage to Vanguard if you have to move the money from one company to another.
@notrichenough, in a taxable account, I probably wouldn’t move for 4.5 basis point difference. But, if there were offsetting LTCG losses for gains, I’d think about it. It is paying more for, by definition, the exact same object. On a million dollars, that’s $450 per year, every year. Granted, it’s a small percentage, but I’d still rather have it in my pocket than theirs 
Re: Vanguard Admiral Share qualifying balances:
https://personal.vanguard.com/us/content/Funds/FundsVGFundsShareClassDefJSP.jsp
To qualify for Admiral Shares, you must meet a minimum investment of:
$10,000 or more in an index fund that offers Admiral Shares.
$50,000 or more in an actively managed fund that offers Admiral Shares.
$100,000 or more in certain sector index funds and tax-managed funds that offer Admiral Shares.
Once your account balance in that fund qualifies, they will automatically convert the shares to Admiral. It does NOT trigger cap gains.
@IxnayBob, if you have a million dollars, you will be in $10,000 minimum funds, which at 0.05% I believe is exactly the same as Vanguard. The Investor class for this fund ($3000 minimum) at Vanguard is 0.17%, which is more than Fidelity.
I don’t have a dog in this fight (although I do have most of my money at Fidelity, and a Fidelity credit card [1.5% cash back on everything, no fee!]), but don’t assume Vanguard will be the lowest just because they invented index funds. 
Check the web sites for the exact funds you want to buy.
@countingDown, it would also not trigger capital gains if you moved a fund from one custodian to another. The example where I mentioned LTCG was moving from Fidelity Spartan 500 to the equivalent Vanguard fund, which afaik will trigger a taxable event.
ETA: and Quicken can apparently finally deal with moving from Investor to Admiral and vv without losing its marbles.
@notrichenough, I want to put new funds into Vanguard so I don’t have all my eggs in one basket so to speak and its nice to get different professional planning perspectives. In the higher level services, most of Vanguard’s free services are only offered at Fidelity if you have a fee based privately managed account with them.
@notrichenough, I’ve got the same credit card and use if frequently :). My one beef with that card is that I had to spend a long time figuring out how to pay the balance in full each month automatically. All good now.
Re Vanguard always being lower, I know that Spartan costs are low. I didn’t look anything up, but was using your 0.095% vs 0.05%, which doesn’t seem like a lot of difference, but since I’m a guy who still picks up spare change I see on the ground, it’s material for me.
My wife’s 401k is at Fidelity, and I have no problem with them. In the first month or two, they marketed to us pretty heavily, but I told them that we were not good candidates for that, and they left us alone.
So how much do I need to retire, lol?
Paying for tuition for 2 kids has put my retirement hopes and dreams on pause.
Hope to never really retire though. I’d like to be able to transition from my job into entrepreneurship.
Vanguard only counts assets invested in their funds, not assets they hold in total in figuring out what category you qualify for. Schwab and Fidelity just count the total assets you have invested with them – even Vanguard funds held in your accounts at their brokerages.