Whether right or wrong, having more money opens more doors and opportunities. Just look at the way casino hotels operate. If you are a high roller, the casino will shower you with free nights in the penthouse suite, free meals, and who knows what other perks unavailable to those of us without the cash to throw around. But it’s not just casinos who want to make the biggest customers happy.
Vanguard, a highly recommended low-cost brokerage, takes a similar approach. High rollers receive a special perk, and it’s a very valuable special perk, worth potentially tens or hundres of thousands of dollars over a lifetime. Certain customers qualify for half-price discounts. Those who belong in this special class have access to mutual funds with lower expense ratios. The more money you have, the more you are allowed to keep, and that’s more of your own money working for you through compounded returns.
This concept is the opposite of what a young investor wanting to save money might like. But investment companies, even Vanguard, are not in business to be charitable. They need to attract big clients.
So if you have at least $100,000 in a single account invested in a single mutual fund at Vanguard, you will qualify for the company’s “Admiral Shares” for that mutual fund. Vanguard has also instituted a policy to reward loyalty. If you have a single account invested in a single mutual fund with a balance of only $50,000, but you’ve owned that fund for over ten years and use Vanguard’s online account access tools, they will accept you into that fund’s Admiral Shares club without having to reach $100,000.
Keep in mind that if you have a new account at Vanguard with $50,000 in a Roth IRA invested in VTSMX and $50,000 in a regular taxable investment account invested in VTSMX, you still don’t qualify. Each account type and fund combination needs to be valued at least $100,000 (or $50,000 if the other conditions apply) for Vanguard to convert your shares to Admiral class.
Here are the Admiral Shares benefits as of today, the equivalent of a comped penthouse suite for the rest of your life:
- For the S&P 500 index fund, your expense ratio will be reduced from 0.15% to 0.07%.
- For the balanced index fund, your expense ratio will be reduced from 0.19% to 0.10%.
- For the growth and income fund, your expense ratio will be reduced from 0.37% to 0.23%.
- For the inflation-protected securities fund, your expense ratio will be reduced from 0.20% to 0.11%.
- For the large-cap index fund, your expense ratio will be reduced from 0.20% to 0.08%.
- For the total stock market index fund, your expense ratio will be reduced from 0.15% to 0.07%.
These are just a few examples of how Vanguard rewards its wealthier customers with lower fees.
If you do qualify in any of your Vanguard account types, the brokerage will automatically convert your shares to Admiral class on a quarterly basis. But if your fund’s balance later dips below the $100,000 (or $50,000) minimum, you will be given a chance to invest new money to make up the difference or your shares will be reclassified to the higher-cost Investor Shares.
The Investor Shares have many of the lowest expenses available in the market place, so small-time investors like me are still getting a reasonably decent deal. Casinos comp small-time players occasionally, too.
E*TRADE has decided to discontinue its collection of index mutual funds. If you hold shares of ETSPX (S&P 500 index fund), ETRUX (Russell 2000 index fund), ETTIX (technology sector index fund), or ETINX (international index fund), E*TRADE or your broker will automatically sell your shares by March 27, 2009.
Even though index funds are likely the best way for most people to invest in the stock market thanks to low fees and returns that match the index, brokerages don’t have much motivation to offer them. Thanks to the low fees, fund managers don’t generate that much income. Without that income, the managers can’t advertise as prominently. E*TRADE’s S&P 500 index fund is quite competitive, with a expense ratio of 0.09%, lower than Vanguard’s 0.15% for VFINX. But VFINX is much more popular.
E*TRADE will likely try to convert index fund customers to managed fund customers. That’s probably the only way for the company to make money. But keeping the customer in mind, I would recommend using the liquidated funds to buy the equivalent low-cost index fund from Vanguard or Fidelity.
5 Money Mistakes in a Bad Economy. Here are the mistakes: continuing to use credit cards, withdrawing or taking a loan from your retirement funds, paying for college without loans, grants, or scholarships, neglecting to invest, and taking home-equity loans.
Bid to Ban Sale of Obama Tickets. Tickets to presidential inaugurations have always been free, but demand for the ability to attend Barack Obama’s ceremony early next year is so high that people are willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars for the opportunity to go. Congress is working to make the sale of these tickets illegal and to penalize those who attempt sell the tickets with a $100,000 fee or a year in jail. Those who live in the Washington, D.C. area stand to make more money by offering their homes and backyards to visitors in exchange for a rental fee.
Consumer Prices Fall Record 1% as Energy Plunges. Thanks to the sharp decline in gas prices, the overall CPI dropped the more in one month than it has since the data were recorded. That’s good news in the short term, resulting in lower expenses for consumers, but could be a problem for businesses when profit margins are already thin.
Last Minute Gift Ideas and Shopping Tips For Holiday Procrastinators. I find myself running around at the last minute as the holidays draw near. Here are some ideas for gifts for those people for whom you might not know how or what to buy. I would stay away from gift cards this year. There’s always a chance your favorite store could have a hard time this year. In the past, stores that enter bankruptcy have not always accepted gift cards.
Vanguard’s New Self-Employed 401(k) Plan – Roth Option Included. Here is a superficial review of this new offering from Vanguard. If I ever give up new contributions to my company 401(k) by leaving the corporate workforce, I’ll be taking advantage of this offering. This is worth more research when the time is right.
For the “News and Blogs” features, which I plan to run almost daily as long as I have additional articles to share, I select some of the most interesting posts from my RSS reader and from pfblogs.org. If you don’t believe you blog is included on my RSS reader, please let me know to so I can add it. Thanks!
It’s now more than a month since I considered taking advantage of a downward market by dollar-cost averaging at specific times. Yes, I’m “timing the market.” After making a few newbie mistakes when buying on the dips, I’ve refined my strategy.
At Vanguard, I have cash in a tax-exempt money market fund, which I will draw from on certain days when the market drops. The cash is what I consider marked for long-term investment. I won’t need to access this money for a while, except if I have a major emergency that depletes my short-term cash. The money market fund, which admittedly is not as great an aption as it was one month ago due to a significant drop in its yield, allows me to quickly transfer small amounts of money to a Vanguard stock market mutual fund when the time is right.
Unfortunately, I don’t have a lot of time to check the market’s performance. After yesterday’s 5% drop in the S&P 500, I thought I had missed my chance to buy another $500 worth of VTSMX.
The market offered me another chance today, falling a further 5%. I happened to check at the right time today and was able to squeak in a purchase of VTSMX in my brokerage account at Vanguard. I may not have the ability to precisely time the bottom, whenever it may come, but strategically buying on poor performing days is one safer way to approach that goal.
So far, this is only my second timing purchase after setting up my Vanguard account properly. I don’t plan on doing this often, but the second day in a row of 5% declines seemed like a fair opportunity.
I warned yesterday that more banks were likely to follow Chase’s lead in lowering interest rates for savings account customers. A few minutes ago, I received an email from ING Direct to inform me that the interest rate offered on the Orange Savings Account has been reduced to yield 2.75%.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been moving more savings out of ING Direct and into other liquid accounts like the FNBO Direct savings account, currently at 3.5% APY, and the Vanguard New Jersey Tax-Exempt Money Market Fund (VNJXX), currently with a 7-day yield of 3.69%.
A few days ago, I mentioned I invested in the stock market at a low with money marked for an intermediate time horizon. I didn’t get the price I wanted, however. I initiated the $3,000 investment in VTSMX, the index fund following the total stock market, on Monday night following the stock market’s sharp decline. My order at Vanguard wasn’t placed until Tuesday’s fund price was set, after the market had regained over half of its losses.
Next time, I will be prepared to take advantage of dips at the right time. As commenters suggested, I will opt for an ETF that tracks the market, accepting a small transaction fee in return for an immediate price. Additionally, I’ll keep money in a money market account at a brokerage to eliminate a delay caused by transferring funds from an external account.
Additionally, I believe it’s time to get a better rate of interest for the cash in savings I might need within a year. This short-term money would earn a better return in a money market fund. The bulk of my cash is earning 3.0% APY at ING Direct and some earning more at FNBO Direct. Yesterday, however, I invested a big portion of my cash in VNJXX, the New Jersey Tax-Exempt Money Market Fund.
This money market fund is currently earning 4.83% APY based on the average yield over the past seven days, and the interest income is tax-free, both federal and state (for me as a resident of New Jersey). Since there are no fees, as the economic situation changes and the fund begins earning less than the after-tax equivalent of a high-yield savings account, I can easily move the funds back.
Money Market Funds like VNJXX are riskier than savings accounts, however. The prospectus outlines five specific risks: state-specific risk, income risk, credit risk, manager risk, and non-diversification risk. I weighed these risks and determined that the fund is a better option for most of the cash I am keeping for short term goals like purchasing a house.
Because I believe this economic crisis will end within the next few years or sooner, I took today’s 777+ point decline in the Dow and 8.8% decline in the S&P 500 as a sign that the stock market, as a whole is on sale.
I opened an individual brokerage account at Vanguard after market hours today, in which I invested the minimum $3,000 in VTSMX, the Total Stock Market Index Fund. The trade will probably be effective at the end of business tomorrow, but I’m not sure if I’ll get today’s price (which has not been set yet) or tomorrow’s price. If I get tomorrow’s price, I might miss gaining from a rebound that the stock market might experience tomorrow.
Market timing is risky, but investing right after relatively large drops is more likely to be an opportunity in the long run. The $3,000 is not money marked for retirement, it is from money set aside for some of my more intermediate goals.
Are you taking advantage of the stock market decline? Is it too risky to try to time the market right now?
I own shares in one exchange-traded fund, iShares Dow Jones U.S. Telecommunications Sector Index Fund (IYZ). I picked up the shares with free money from a Sharebuilder bonus, and since it was free money, I decided to attempt to choose an investment narrower than my typical investing philosophy would normally allow. Rather than a broad stock market index fund, I selected an industry that I thought would have great prospects for the 21st century.
For a while, ETFs became a favorite investment vehicle in the financial media. In the most basic form, ETFs are like index mutual funds. They benefit from low turnover, little tax liability, and low management fees. You can trade ETFs like stocks with a similar transaction fee. If you have a lump sum to invest for the long-term, the larger the lump sum investment, the smaller the fee is as a percentage of the assets.
According to Money Magazine, Wall Street is taking advantage of the popularity and frugal reputation of ETFs by creating an increasing number of these investments with higher turnover and fees.
Like index mutual funds, ETFs were designed to track traditional market benchmarks with long track records, like the Dow and the S&P 500. But to stand out from their rivals, lately providers have been cobbling together portfolios based on custom-designed indexes they hope will beat the market’s performance…
No question, traditional index ETFs are still dirt cheap, typically charging 0.20% or less. Yet the average expense ratio for ETFs overall is much higher — 0.53% of assets vs. 0.35% in 2002. What’s the deal? Newer ETFs with complex strategies tend to incur higher management and transaction fees.
IYZ falls right below the industry average with a total expense ratio of 0.48%. What have I received for this fee so far? I funded the account on August 9, 2005 with $50. As of today, after reinvesting dividends, my account is valued at $46.99.
Would I have been better off with VOX, Vanguard’s equivalent ETF? It appears that the two funds follow each other closely, but Vanguard carries a slight advantage. The lower expense ratio (0.23%) seems to account for Vanguard’s better performance. That slight advantage could account for a significant difference between the two funds’ performance if I hold onto the account for decades.
Despite recent poor performance, I believe the telecommunications industry is a great choice for the next century or so. I don’t mind “timing” the market with a free $50.
The best investment in 10 years: Get in while you can [Money Magazine]
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