Where do I go after Wells Fargo? Looking for a new brokerage.
December 15, 2021 9:49 AM   Subscribe

Wells-Fargo told me in September that poor dirtbags like myself with less than $500K in assets would be charged $150 a year. So I want to move my money. Where to?

Fine, Wells-Fargo. Fine.

Where do I go from here? I've got some investments and an inherited IRA, plus a few other old 401Ks out there that I should consolidate in one place.

Any recommendations? I see Fidelity gets rated highly, along with TD Ameritrade.

I'm not a daytrader. I have Microsoft I inherited, and Google I bought way back when, and I just sit on them. I'm not against daytrading, I just don't have the experience to feel comfortable doing it.
posted by atchafalaya to Work & Money (16 answers total) 4 users marked this as a favorite
 
Best answer: Vanguard is excellent.
posted by vitout at 9:52 AM on December 15, 2021 [10 favorites]


Best answer: Second Vanguard.
posted by General Malaise at 9:56 AM on December 15, 2021


Best answer: I have also been very happy with Vanguard. The expense ratio on even my most expensive fund is still under the industry average, and most of my funds are far far less than that.
posted by phunniemee at 9:57 AM on December 15, 2021 [1 favorite]


Best answer: I've been happy with Fidelity - no ridiculous fees, straightforward customer service, full-featured, zero fee index funds, etc. I also had Vanguard in the past and similarly had no issues although I did find their website slightly more challenging to navigate. That was several years ago, though, and things may have changed.
posted by mosst at 9:58 AM on December 15, 2021 [1 favorite]


Best answer: Fidelity's website is a little fiddly but I've found their phone support to be top notch, helpful for basic questions as well as tech support type things. I've also got some passive investing via Wealthfront (automated, not a brokerage per se) and I do enjoy their basic set-it-and-forget it approach and they have a terrific website.
posted by jessamyn at 10:18 AM on December 15, 2021 [1 favorite]


And I am happy with Schwab, the other of the big three (along with Fidelity and Vanguard). I don't think you'd go wrong with any of them.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 10:50 AM on December 15, 2021 [3 favorites]


One side thing about Schwab is that some of their services don't appear to have an email-verification loop, so when someone created an account using my email address I started getting his private financial information sent to me. I ended up having to yell at their CS reps to get it to stop, because nothing short of yelling worked.

...so I guess take care you enter the correct email address if you use them. This is not a comment on their services generally.
posted by aramaic at 11:27 AM on December 15, 2021 [1 favorite]


Vanguard and Fidelity are the obvious choices.
posted by plonkee at 11:38 AM on December 15, 2021


Best answer: Until a recent consolidation project, I simultaneously had accounts of various types at Vanguard (old employer 401k I never moved), Fidelity (current employer 401k), Schwab (employer stock plan), and TD Ameritrade (personal investments).

Based on a combination of customer service and quality of their websites/apps, my order of preference is probably: Vanguard, TD Ameritrade, Fidelity, Schwab. But Schwab bought TD Ameritrade and is combining accounts, so those have to be considered as one now. How smoothly the transition goes is TBD, but personally I would not sign up for a new TD Ameritrade account now, until we see how that shakes out. The Vanguard accounts I had did not have access to individual stocks, just their funds, but I assume their non-401k accounts can buy anything? If so, they would be my first choice. Fidelity never really did me wrong, but I found their customer service folks to be less knowledgable, they were more aggressive about trying to get me to work with one of their in-house advisors (which I never think is a good idea), and their transfer-out process when I had to do it was much less smooth (of course they have no incentive to make it easy to take your money away from them, but Vanguard made it much easier the time I did it with them). Schwab's web app is terrible and I found their customer service people to be less helpful than average, though not awful. I personally am sad that my Ameritrade account is turning into Schwab.

I don't think you'd go incredibly wrong with any of these, and they should all be a massive improvement over Wells Fargo.
posted by primethyme at 2:37 PM on December 15, 2021 [2 favorites]


Best answer: I have my stuff spread across more than one company, but I will say that Vanguard is a great no-fuss no-muss option if you just want to sock some money somewhere. Relatively easy website, not a huge dollar barrier to getting in. Returns have been just fine.

I just don't have the time to do a ton of research or obsess over options, I'm happy Vanguard fills this niche.
posted by gimonca at 3:35 PM on December 15, 2021


Best answer: I have Vanguard and they are great if you grew up with Amazon, all online, great funds and ethical, at least by financial industry standards. Fidelity has a less good site, but they do have physical offices if that is important to you. Schwab is beloved by those who use their ATM cards a lot, since all fees are refunded.
posted by wnissen at 4:46 PM on December 15, 2021


Betterment. They automatically diversify your portfolio for you and are very low fee (0.25% last time I looked, though it's been a while). They have both retirement and non-retirement options and you just pick whether you want to use their ethical or standard investment option and the level of risk you want to take. I've used them for years and am very happy with them. If you have no interest in trading stocks and plan to just put your money in broad index funds, it's worth taking a look at.

I've also used Schwab (obnoxiously slow customer service whenever I've had an issue that required talking to a person) and E-trade (really great service and I didn't have a whole lot of money there).
posted by snaw at 3:53 AM on December 16, 2021


Best answer: I have accounts with Vanguard (my own brokerage, IRA, and Roth IRA) and Fidelity (SIMPLE IRA through work) and they are both fine, but when I leave this job and stop contributing to the Fidelity account I will most likely roll it all over to Vanguard, which I slightly prefer, for convenience.

I inherited a couple of Betterment accounts and I feel like they charge a lot for what you get. Yeah, they rebalance, but you could get similar results with a target date fund. The advantage of rebalancing is that it provides opportunities for tax-loss harvesting, etc. but you can't tax-loss harvest anyway if most of your money is in tax-deferred accounts like IRAs/401ks.
posted by mskyle at 5:29 AM on December 16, 2021 [1 favorite]


Best answer: I have both an IRA and a 401K at Fidelity. They originated with an employer I left in 1985. I'm thinking of moving the accounts to my regular broker, UBS, who I do business with as a direct result of who my grandfather worked for back in the day.

I'm finding Fidelity to be a tad annoying. I get notifications every year or so that I have a new "representative" with whom I may, or may not, ever speak, and there is also a higher-level guy who remains. The process for taking Required Minimum Distributions (I'm that old) is strangely opaque. Some things are automatic, some require a phone call.

The web site is fine, but I've had the experience of following a link to some new service or planning tool and being taken out of Fidelity's site and onto a third party site.
posted by SemiSalt at 6:11 AM on December 16, 2021 [1 favorite]


Best answer: A couple years ago, I switched from a couple online accounts to having my IRAs consolidated with Edward Jones, via a local rep. There is a small (but, to me, more than reasonable) fee associated with his services, but he has been very engaged with me. About once a quarter, he touches base to see how I'm doing and if I have any questions, and annually he has a sit-down (or, Zoom) meeting to go over my goals, risk comfort levels, contributions, etc. in-depth and make sure that I'm on track for where I want to be. In the two-three years I've been using him, I've seen more growth than in the previous fifteen years, which was Oppenheimer and Wells Fargo, both of whom basically forgot I even existed but were happy to take my money every month.
posted by xedrik at 9:36 AM on December 18, 2021


Best answer: I've been with Schwab for twenty years. I agree that the other best options are Fidelity and Vanguard, but I don't have experience with them.

One thing to consider about Schwab is that you can bank with them as well, which makes transfers from brokerage to banking especially convenient, and Schwab absorbs all ATM fees, so you'll never hunt for an in-network ATM again. Maybe Vanguard and Fidelity do that, too -- I don't know. But I've been happy enough with Schwab that I've never gone shopping for an alternative.
posted by Scarf Joint at 6:53 PM on December 20, 2021


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