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I realize this isn’t for everyone but I use Interactive Brokers for most of my investments. A key benefit is their low cost for currency conversions. They charge 0.002% above the spot price. For every $100,000 being converted, they charge $2. The best I have found at other banks is 100x that and usually it is much higher.
I also invest using a “risk parity” passive approach – basically an index approach but diversifying further by investing more in leveraged bonds in order to reduce overall risk – and Interactive Brokers makes it easy to buy future contracts.
I was with Vanguard for 40 years. Sadly about three years ago their service really took a nosedive. It’s hard to breakup with a company that you have relied on and that you have trusted for so many years. Then, they botched up a corporate action on one of my holdings and it took me hours on the telephone to remedy the situation.
Subsequently I walked into a Schwab office and personally met my Schwab advisor, opened an account and transferred my Vanguard holdings to Schwab. When calling there is never a wait. If he doesn’t answer directly, he phones me back within a few minutes. He also responds quickly to emails. Surprisingly I received a rather large cash bonus for opening the account and my rep takes myself and my wife out to lunch a couple times a year. I have a self directed no fee account so am amazed at the service I receive and it makes me feel appreciated.
My only nitpick is that Schwab does not offer a sweep account into a money market fund. So one must sell money market funds first and then buy stocks to avoid margin interest charge. Thiis extra step is irritating. Incidentally Schwab has a fine tool for QCDs that keeps track of how much you have withdrawn from your IRA and how much more you need to withdraw to meet your MRD.
For these brokerage firms, paying little or nothing on cash accounts is how they subsidize the rest of their operations — and pay for those client lunches. I, too, have become disgruntled with Vanguard. But I’m still there, in part because the firm doesn’t play the cross-subsidy game.
Because we are paranoid (thank you Bernie Madoff), my husband and I each have our main assets spread across 3 financial companies: Me: vanguard, fidelity and schwab, my husband: Vanguard, Fidelity and T. Rowe Price. I used to love Vanguard, but not anymore due to poor service, and not so knowledgeable phone help. By far, my favorite is Fidelity – with great intelligent service and relatively easy to use website. My second favorite is Schwab. They also have knowledgeable phone help and also a Roth Conversion Calculator that lets you vary assumptions. Vanguard and TRPrice: Meh.
I was planning to open up a seemingly better yield MMF with Vanguard when compared it w my Fidelity MMF, but I made the mistake of creating & setting up my new Vanguard joint account on a Friday evening. When I ran into an issue with funding this new account, I couldn’t get any phone assistance because their support had closed for the weekend. My Fidelity has phone support 24/7. In addition, when I consolidated everything from TR Price, M1, Vanguard, & Schwab, Fidelity reimbursed all my transfer fees to a total of $350.00. Needless to say, I am very happy sticking with Fidelity.
Thank you Jackie, as we likewise still retain three asset holders for redundancy and robustness reasons. We don’t utilize their advisory services, but still feel maintaining diversification of service providers slightly reduces hacking or other digital risks.
Fidelity without a doubt. I find my advisor thoughtful and generous with his time. TIAA credit are pleasant but pretty useless. My current state 401 k manager Empower has good people but few products and surprisingly high charges. Worst ever was Valic high charges and completely uninspired. They fought like heck to transfer my funds.
Vanguard for 30 years yes they have changed but we all have……I am a buy and hold type so they have done me good at low cost……we have 2 brick and mortar banks for bill pay and 1 credit card……..I use Kiss for my financial investment instead of CD invest in wife’s Roth Healthcare that has in the past returned average 9% and can get $$ anytime we need it
I use Charles Schwab for all my investments except my HSA, which HSA is at Fidelity. I use Affinity Federal Credit Union for my transactional accounts.
Why split them? Schwab does not have an HSA, but it is a core product at Fidelity. Why not use Fidelity for everything? They have separate platforms for the HSA, 401K and investments. While it is not clear trying to move funds between them, or find an overall view is difficult. at Fidelity, easy at Schwab
All have great service and products that meet my needs at a low price.
Fidelity, I think their website is over complicated and hard to use. However, they manage my pension payout from AT&T, which includes a free full service financial advisor, who did a great job before I retired.
I am very happy with Fidelity for my brokerage accounts. I agree Vanguard has changed for the worse, but it’s still OK. Fidelity has great tools on its site and I get a free financial advisor—though one who can give only limited advice—because I have sufficient assets. My online savings account is with Ally. I don’t know if other banks offer this, but at Ally I can save my money in buckets, and contribute or withdraw from those buckets So I have buckets for special occasions, medical expenses, saving for a car, etc.
I use both Fidelity and Vanguard since the 1980’s. I learned early on never to put all your eggs in one basket, especially like one stock where you work. Anything can FAIL no matter how Big. Overall these two companies have served all my needs, and yes they both have had some ups and downs, but are solid companies and plan to use them until my death, currently I am 76. For banks, I chose online accounts at Ally and Marcus, both always competing for a good rate, and compete with the highest. Also I manage all my investments, as paying 1% and more adds up over a lifetime, I primarily use ETF’s for Dow Jones, S&P, and Nasdaq. I use a small percentage 3.4% of my portfolio to deal in individual stocks, as we all like to think we can do better!
I have used Fidelity for over 25 years. They are not perfect, but they have about every service I have required over these years. Their service suffered during Covid (as did most companies) but they have improved this year.I do maintain a local credit union account for cash deposit transactions and an internet bank account for high interest (Synchrony).
Contrary to what some of the others have said, I’m still very happy with Vanguard. I recommend them highly as my brokerage. I use CapitalOne360 for my banking and Personal Capital to track my portfolio allocations. I also have Quicken at home to track all of my expenses. I’ve been using all of these for years and am very happy.
At one time I would have said Vanguard was the best place for you investments. Sadly I can’t recommend them anymore, I still have an account with them but I am most likely going to move my investments to Fidelity where I already have an HSA account. John Bogle’s Vanguard has changed and not for the better in my opinion. They use to offer a cash mangement account that was taken away, they use to give you free Turbo Tax filing that was taken away, they use to give you a dedicated advisor if you reached a certain account balance that was also taken away. But you can pay for one if you desire otherwise it’s an average hold time of 1 hour to speak to a representative. They have lost their way maybe they are a victim of there own low cost philosophy Schwab and Fidelity have cut their cost on funds and ETFs in some cases lower than Vanguard but the customer service is much better than Vanguard. So my solution is to keep my Vanguard ETFs but let another company hold my accounts. This I feel I am forced to do regrettable after 30 years as a Vanguard client. On the bright side though if you need a great bank or should I say credit union look no further than Alliant.
I recommend Personal Capital for tracking all of my financial accounts. It’s very easy to open the app and see all my account balances and net worth. One extra benefit is it helps me with fraud in that I know if something looks wrong fairly quickly. Game changer for me.
One thing that really bothers me is when websites get too designy, especially when buttons are hidden or mysterious, you have to maneuver through multiple menus to get to the function you want, or text is surrounded by a lot of white space so a lot of scrolling is required. Examples are CapitalOne 360 and TIAA retirement services. The latter is painful to use.
Examples of better web services: Amex banking may not look flashy, but all accounts are in a simple list. Schwab has options to compress the info or expand it, but all info is clearly shown on one page that can be scanned at a glance and most functions are always available in simple pull down menus.
We soured on Vaguard because last year they sent a small IRA (less than $5k) to a company in Texas that charges high fees. When Vanguard sent notice before doing this, we confirmed by secure email that it wasn’t necessary and they would keep the account. Why secure email? Because it was impossible to get someone on the phone. Regardless, the representative gave incorrect info and the account was moved. It cost a $35 annual fee and $25 acct closing fee to roll the money over to an IRA at Schwab, which we would have done in the first place if Vanguard had given us the proper info.
Moving out accounts less than $5k is an abrogation of a promise in ads to champion the small investor.
Also, whereas I was happy with the index funds in education IRAs (all spent down by 2018), I was unhappy with customer service only available by secure email.
Schwab and Merrill have real people in USA who answer the phone and find the correct answers.
Vanguard, followed by Fidelity and M1 Finance. My local credit union for savings accounts. To ensure that all my investment accounts have SPIC coverage, I have multiple accounts and open a new one when any one of them hits $500k.
Sorry, SIPC, not SPIC.
I’ve used Fidelity for 30+ years. Got away from brick and mortar banks and consolidated all with Fidelity about 20 years ago. I can get all the Vanguard funds via ETF. I use Synchrony for high yield savings. I maintain an account with a local credit union for cash deposits
Vanguard for mutual funds or brokerage services. Bogle had investors interests at heart.
Banks – Fidelity Investments is great and Marcus for a high-yield savings account suffices. I see no need to have a brick & mortar bank these days.
Brokerage Firms – Fidelity again & Vanguard. Great index fund options with no or little cost. Schwab also solid. TD, Etrade not so much – the best index funds have fees.
Others – Novo for small business banking, Fidelity 2% cash back credit card, Chase/Amex/Discover have great credit card and service.
I’ve always liked NerdWallet for their well-researched articles, online calculators and helpful comparisons.
I’ve been an E-Trade client for a number of years They are my only broker, so I don’t have anything to compare with. But I’m very happy with their service. I can always talk to someone if I need help, they are knowledgeable, and their fees are very reasonable. I like their trading platform. It is easy to use and it always works.
I concur on E-trade. They have a great trading platform and good service. I used them for several years but had worries about them surviving the banking crisis. So had them transfer my account to Vanguard, where I held my mutual funds. In hind sight I would have been better served remaining with E-trade, but there was fear in the air at that time and their stock was cratering 🙁
I was with M1 (Easy one-click rebalancing, Good incentive to move in with large portfolio and left when they grew too large to offer straight forward run of the mill customer service. Checked again lately by asking a question. Still sucks. Moved to Vanguard and experienced a sudden drop in customer service. (Try to find their help phone line number) Decided to move again to Fidelity or Schwab. HELP!
Vanguard has been my principle custodian over the years for their low fees, index funds and corporate structure that Bogel set up. ( benefit the individual investor, not the Schwab or Johnson family @ Fidelity) Competition and more transparency has brought many companies, especially new ones into the fold with some great offerings. I’ve aggregated my assets into two platforms for ease of record keeping (Vanguard-Taxable holdings and Schwab-Retirement accounts)
I have used Mint for years to aggregate many different accounts (e.g., credit cards, banks, etc.). I like Vanguard and Schwab, and am getting used to Fidelity due to the new company 401K is there.
I’ve been enjoying using the online bank Ally and the investing platform M1 Finance. I use Personal Capital to keep track of my financial life. The one thing all of these services have in common? They are totally free to use.
I like the research and planning tools for Fidelity. It also has a good online investor community with a few very knowledgeable and helpful members.
I have a small account in Schwas as their stock research offers several qualitative reports (CFRA, Argus, Credit Suisse, Morningstar).
The Morningstar XRay tool (premium) is available for free at TRowePrice. I find it handy for portfolio inspection.
For many years now I’ve roughly split our investments between Vanguard and Charles Schwab. I love Vanguard for its history and values, its ownership structure (the company is owned by its funds, so the fund shareholders actually own the company), and especially its Portfolio Watch feature (by Yodlee) wherein you can list all your investments, whether held at Vanguard or elsewhere, and automatically have an up-to-date analysis of your total portfolio (stock/bonds/cash; domestic/foreign; growth/value; large cap/small cap; etc., etc.).
I love Schwab for its history of helping the DIY investor, its low fees, and above all, its customer service. You can typically reach someone on the phone quickly, and it’s a knowledgeable person who actually wants to help you, even if your issue is a little complicated.
It might simplify my life a bit to consolidate but I like having access to the features of both, and psychologically there may be a small comfort in not having all my eggs in one basket!
I have used many different brokerage firms over the years and within the last 2 years have consolidated to Charles Schwab. I left them years ago when they didn’t lower their commissions to match the discount brokers. Now that their trading commissions are “zero” I am fully onboard with their service.