Least annoying Roth IRA?

May 2, 2022 1:47 PM

My small bank moved my Roth IRA account to a large banking company. I find their interface non-intuitive and generally aggravating. Do you have a Roth IRA provider with a pleasant user interface and that you enjoy? What is it?!
posted by aaanastasia to Work & Money (9 answers total)

I use Vanguard, and think their interface is plenty fine, and the fees are super low. I also have money in Fidelity in an employer plan and like it less.
posted by advicepig at 1:52 PM on May 2, 2022 [3 favorites]

I use Vanguard, but I also have everything automated so I only ever use the website/app to check my balance or, rarely, change the automatic settings. I have only ever had IRAs through Vanguard so I can’t offer comparisons there, but I definitely prefer Vanguard to the other interfaces from e.g. other 401k providers I’ve had to use due to work.
posted by Alterscape at 1:52 PM on May 2, 2022 [1 favorite]

I manage accounts in both Fidelity and Vanguard. I prefer Vanguard's politics, but I like Fidelity's UI much more. The Vanguard UI doesn't really make sense to me. (To be fair, I've used the Fidelity accounts much more. Vanguard would probably make sense if I put the time in to figure it out.)
posted by Winnie the Proust at 1:54 PM on May 2, 2022 [1 favorite]

I've used Vanguard, TIAA, Fidelity and some other weird 401k provider my husband's company used to use. Of those, Vanguard is the least annoying - easiest to find funds, information, and transact.

I don't know if I'd go so far as to use the terms pleasant or enjoy, but it works.
posted by Dashy at 1:55 PM on May 2, 2022 [1 favorite]

I think Vanguard's user interface is terrible, but I only use it a few times a year (and I forget how to do everything, and their help is not up-to-date) so it's not the biggest hassle.
posted by The_Vegetables at 1:56 PM on May 2, 2022 [1 favorite]

I have been happy with both Schwab and Vanguard, interface-wise. Work recently switched us over to TIAA-CREF and getting set up was a nightmare, but that may have been because of the very specific case of being moved from one provider to another by a third party. Now that I’m actually set up it seems okay, though I haven’t done much there other than checking a balance periodically.
posted by Stacey at 1:56 PM on May 2, 2022

The problem you're going to have is that IRAs are generally held at brokerages, not banks. And brokerage accounts are inherently complicated relative to a consumer bank. So their web UIs are correspondingly confusing and ugly.

Schwab has probably the least bad UI and support of the big brokerages.

Avoid Vanguard. Their web UI is terrible (a baffling mix of two websites, one of which they've been trying to retire for years) and it takes them literally hours to pick up the phone during tax season unless you are a big spender. They're not even especially cheap for the average IRA investor.

If your IRA funds are held in cash, not stocks or mutual funds then, well, that's probably a bad decision that's going to make it harder for your to retire, but if that's the case, and that's what you want, then you don't have to pick a brokerage with a terrible website. You can move your IRA to a regular bank that offers IRAs with returns roughly equal to the very low return you'd get in a savings account. Ally has a great UI.
posted by caek at 2:14 PM on May 2, 2022 [2 favorites]

The standards for what constitute a "good" user interface for a retirement account are quite different than for a typical website. Ideally you should be logging on at most quarterly, because the provably best way to invest is to set up contributions and not check or change your investments. Vanguard, which is mostly a consumer brokerage rather than a corporate 401(k) manager, has a site that's old, a bit quirky, and, crucially, very soothing. The Fidelity consumer site is a seething mass of market data that is completely irrelevant except to day traders, and potentially harmful to skittish individual investors. Lots of people have Fidelity 401(k)s through their jobs, but I wouldn't choose them myself.
posted by wnissen at 10:06 AM on May 3, 2022 [2 favorites]

Having looked at dozens, I find Schwab the most intuitive, which isn't saying much, but it's still a brokerage account, rather than a bank. On the plus side, I've also found their customer service the most helpful, too.

I strongly dislike Vanguard and TD Ameritrade's and really hate E*Trade's, or did last time I looked which was probably more than a year ago.

All that said, if you live in a place that's surrounded by Fidelity brick-and-mortars, vs Schwab brink-and-mortars, or vice versa, I'd pick the one with a local office. That way, on the off chance you need to, you can march in and ask for help with transfers or new accounts etc.
posted by small_ruminant at 7:56 PM on May 3, 2022 [1 favorite]