for display only
Big Blue Interactive The Corner Forum  
Back to the Corner

Archived Thread

NFT: Mutual Fund Investing - Vanguard - Help me pick

rasbutant : 4/11/2018 2:25 pm
I need to invest my $5,500 IRA money, the account is with Vanguard.

I was going to just drop it all into the Target Retirement Fund, but decided to stop and ask BBI.

Any advice???

send it to me instead...  
giants#1 : 4/11/2018 2:30 pm : link



















More seriously, Schwab has a broad stock market fund (SWTSX) with a 0.03% expense ratio and I believe Vanguard offers similar funds with 0.04-0.05% expense ratios. If you're retirement horizon is still a ways out (5+ years), I'd look at those since the expenses are significantly lower than the target funds (IIRC, these were in the 0.2-0.25% range even with Vanguard).

Even with $5500, I'd consider breaking it into 2-4 batches ($1,000-$1,500 each) and dollar cost averaging over the rest of this year assuming you won't pay substantial commissions. If you have a Vanguard IRA, I believe you can trade their funds free.
ok, so look for low expense  
rasbutant : 4/11/2018 2:37 pm : link
good return.

The retirement target ones are 1.3 -1.5

I mean  
rasbutant : 4/11/2018 2:38 pm : link
.13 to .15
well past returns don't guarantee future returns  
giants#1 : 4/11/2018 2:46 pm : link
but you definitely want to minimize the expense ratios. Target date is good if you want to set it and forget it or not have to worry about periodic rebalancing (quarterly/annually). But in general you're going to pay a higher fee (though .15 is still good) than if you were to invest in the underlying funds yourself.
Back to the Corner