Also worth knowing: Charles Schwab has reduced the minimum investment to $1 for 10 different index funds, many of which have expense ratios of 0.06% or lower. Their S&P 500 fund, for instance, has an expense ratio of 0.03% for any investment amount. Vanguard by comparison charges 0.15%, 0.04% for investments greater than $10k, and 0.03% for $3+ million.

I use CS for my brokerage account and don't have any complaints about it.

That sounds much cheaper than the 0.25% that Betterment charges me. Do you happen to know if they offer a traditional/roth IRA and how much they charge?

They do. Vanguard doesn't charge anything extra for retirement accounts. It's just a matter of ticking a box when you sign up. Schwab is probably similar.

I have a Schwab Roth IRA. They don't charge anything.

What if Schwab raises the .03% fee for their S&P 500 mutual fund to .06% in a few years? They can change their rates anytime right? In that case it would have better to stick with VOO? Of course Vanguard could raise their rates too.

The one advantage of Vanguard is that the company itself is owned by its funds. So the very people who pay the admin fees are the ones who vote the leadership in or out. So raising fees would be unlikely unless necessary and they are known to be very frugal as a company as well so I feel like they are unlikely to need more fees. Especially with almost $3 Trillion under management.

Of course, there isn't any real cost to switching. So you could always switch to Schwab or vice versa as needed.

There isn't a large cost to switching brokerages and keeping the same funds (although it's a pain and some places do claw back $50 or so on the way out the door), but there could be a major cost to switching funds within your brokerage, eg. switching from SCHB to VTI. If you're not in a tax-deferred account, that switch will cause you to realize capital gains and pay a 15% tax at the moment of sale.

That's why I prefer to stick with Vanguard: like you explained, fund holders are their corporate owners and they're supremely unincentivized to perform a bait and switch. Schwab, on the other hand, could decide to raise admin fees 10 basis points tomorrow if they decided the revenue justified the increased churn.

Yeah, I think "a community for index fund investors" already exists, and it's the boglehead forums and wiki.

Index fund investing is (relatively) simple and (relatively) boring. Honest questions: What does an app with leader boards, individual portfolios, and stock picking add to that or how does this app fit in with that philosophy?

(edit for grammar)

The only thing it seems to add is the opportunity for people to sell you high-margin investment products -- which is exactly what index fund investors are trying to avoid. Any investment product with a marketing budget is taking fees to pay for that, which means they will be unattractive to index investors.

My thought when going around the investment communities is that the challenge is not really the quantity of information/advice, but the quality. Anyone can give stock picks. To me, I'd like to understand more about the person's track records (historical returns) before following his advice.

I started working with my colleague to build Keel to facilitate the verified information flow. People who are selling their stock/fund ideas on Keel will have to integrate directly with their personal brokerages. This way, users who are looking to follow credible ideas can see not only the historical returns, but also the real buy/sell activities.

Working around brokerages is challenging but I believe transparency is an important missing piece in all of the online/offline sources of investment advice. Hope this will help those who offer credible ideas shine, and save time and money for those who look for advice. And (here comes to the self-promote part), if you think this is interesting, check it out: https://keel.io

Of course, if you don't think it's interesting, still let us know how we can make it more interesting to you!

"Yeah, I think "a community for index fund investors" already exists, and it's the boglehead forums and wiki."

A community for index fund investors sounds oxy-moronish to me ...

What's to talk about ?

How to schedule saving for retirement, annual fees, ETFs vs index Funds, index allocations, optimal portfolios based on personal temperament, and when to (very seldomly) change allocations (if ever)?

Any tips for investors in Europe? (Germany or UK in my personal case).

I understand that these strategies are not country-specific, but not sure if Vanguard is accessible to non-US citizens, and there might be tax implications in different countries. That's why I'm asking.

For folks in the United Kingdom, Vanguard index funds are now accessible through their new website[0]. Their website was released mid May 2017 and has caused a good shakeup[1] in the individual investor space as other stock brokers commission charges are incredibly high.

[0] https://www.vanguardinvestor.co.uk/home

[1] http://www.scotsman.com/business/markets-economy/bill-jamies...

They have mentioned that Vanguard will be looking to give access to Europe in 2018.

[Edit] - Removed Financial Times link as they have a paywall.

One thing about Index trackers is that the research and all the hype is largely about S&P500 and the US stock market. Europe wide indices are more complex and I haven't seen as much research. EuroStoxx 50 is very bank heavy and only has 50 stocks, the 600 is wider but not so popular. There is more of a case to buy active funds in Europe.

For tax specific stuff you should look at your regional sites eg

https://global.vanguard.com/portal/site/home https://www.ishares.com/us/ishares-global

> (Germany or UK in my personal case) [...] not sure if Vanguard is accessible to non-US citizens, and there might be tax implications in different countries

Vanguard operate mutual funds in the UK priced and traded in GBP, through their UK subsidiary. They're available through most major trading platforms. The one thing to note about Vanguard's UK funds is that the management fees are higher than their US equivalents (but still one of the cheapest in the UK market).

As others have said, you can also just buy ETF versions of most of their funds, which are regular shares traded on the stock market. In that case you're buying in USD.

As far as tax is concerned it's treated just like any other investment (and if you're tax resident in the UK and still have an ISA allowance you can just put it in there and negate the tax entirely).

There's a good list of UK brokers here, most of which have Vanguard funds. http://monevator.com/compare-uk-cheapest-online-brokers/ Personally, I use Charles Stanley Direct and I don't have any complaints about them.

Make sure to stick it in an ISA account if possible to keep it tax free.

The idea of indexing doesn't require a specific index. It is more general than that. The idea that average returns are pretty good, and average returns with low cost-of-management are even better.

In order to get average returns, the key is simply to own a tiny fraction of the entire market, whatever "market" means to you. The focus has long been on the S&P simply because it has historically done a pretty good job of representing the US equities market, it is market-cap weighted (unlike the Dow), and the earliest index funds tracked the S&P.

It's my expectation, stated without proof, that it should be easy to find a comparable index in Europe, if you want to match the average European return.

The key idea behind index investing is paying low fees.

Non index funds perform the same as index funds (and research indicates you can differentiate the ones that outperform a priori with any method). But those funds have higher fees.

You can buy Vanguard funds through Charles Stanley.

https://www.charles-stanley-direct.co.uk/ViewFund?Sedol=B41X...

You might want to check the various ETFs - they're pretty much the same as index funds.

http://www.investopedia.com/articles/mutualfund/05/etfindexf...

I'm from Europe and I'm holding couple of Blackrock ETFs.

Here's handy site for screening EU based ETFs (no affiliation).

https://www.justetf.com/

Hi, I highly recommend a book in case you read German. Despite its weird title, I found it very worthwhile.

Souverän investieren mit Indexfonds und ETFs: Wie Privatanleger das Spiel gegen die Finanzbranche gewinne

by Gerd Kommer

You can also google for Kommer Portfolio. It is, IMHO, very well balanced (asset classes, geography etc.).

Good info! Sorry, our accounts keep getting rate limited.

I personally like to follow my own index fund portfolio. Then when I first started index investing there was about a 90 day period where I had to research and figure out what I wanted my own portfolio to be.

Also index funds do change over time. For example if you have more taxable income you will want a more tax advantaged index fund portfolio. You'll also want a special portfolio for your retirement accounts, and maybe something for your kid's 529 plan, etc...

There are many popular index fund communities for these reasons, plus lots of people find investing fun and interesting and like to learn more about it and help others.

Couch Potato investor. 50 percent Vanguard Total Market Index, 50 percent Vanguard Inflation Protected Securities. Rebalance yearly.

https://assetbuilder.com/lazy-portfolios

I think this portfolio lacks an "antifragile" asset. Invest, say, 5% in something with high risks, high returns, and potentially anticyclic, such as cryptocurrencies.

What do you think?

I do this! :)

I think its what every young person (under 30) should be doing.

And old person (over 30)

@ 30 I assume you have a wife & kids.

I think its kind of irresponsible to make risky bets at that age.

You should invest more is "safe bets" like bonds.

To automatically see your returns rather than manually input your holdings, check out https://www.keel.io. Keel allows you to compare your returns to successful investors, and subscribe to their portfolios.

It's cool to be able to follow the real stock purchase from other investors' brokerages!

I'm opposed to your Wealthfront suggestion since their version of high risk (at least in the past) meant high commodities exposure.

why VOO and not SPY?

I have always said do 60% SPY and 40% QQQ.

SPY has a higher expense ratio at 0.09%, so for long term holding VOO is slightly better. The difference is tiny though