if you had to roll over your 401(k) from an old job into an IRA, which one would you choose and why?

I have 2 401(k) from old jobs at Vanguard that I want to roll over into an IRA, and I need to decide if I stay with Vanguard, or if I move everything to Fidelity where I have the 401(k) from the current job.

I know we like Vanguard, on the other hand it may be nice to have all accounts in one place.

Thoughts?

My sister is in the business and said Vanguard.

I was going to go Fidelity because they have a local presence, but to say that the service I received locally was disappointing would be a huge understatement.

So I went with Vanguard.

….vanguard but they have raised minimums….they used to let you combine to meet minimums for each fund but now they have higher minimum for each fund, even in IRA….

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I reject your reality and substitute my own!

Kinda the same in my opinion, or differences are significant only for people working with dollar amounts much larger than mine.

Fidelity has an excellent website that works well, and local brick and mortar location to boot. Many on the early retirement forums have switched from Vanguard to Fidelity due to poor customer support.

I think they are similar enough (I have accounts with both). I think the general trend I've seen echos what Forrest reports. But Vanguard is huge and their offerings are very comparable with Fidelity. From a financial standpoint I'd call them equivalent. You might find slight differences in customer support and the platform/interface/apps in general, but over time, I think they are likely to continue to be peers and will fluctuate over time (in terms of who is currently rated "better").

I haven't had any issues at Vanguard, but my needs aren't complex. You probably can't go wrong on either.

Two record labels I haven't heard of in years.

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I find Fidelity’s printed statements to be easier to decipher than Vanguard’s.

My old employer's 401K was with Fidelity. I dithered a bit too long to transfer my 401K out of Fidelity to another entity, namely Vanguard, based on a coworker's recommendation.

Meanwhile my old company shut down completely, rather unexpectedly given that they had just relocated to a much smaller office space. After that, Fidelity threw up some ridiculous and probably illegal obstacles, such as "We can't transfer anything until more of the former employees whose funds we hold also want them moved". It turned out OK thanks to a Vanguard representative and my old boss getting his accountant involved, but it left me with a poor opinion of .Fidelity.

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My life goes smoothly and in regular intervals

We're completely at Fidelity because of customer service, website, breadth of offerings and our history. When we retired we moved our 403b's to Fidelity and rolled them into IRA's (because there are no fees with IRA's and there are with 403b's). It was very simple and Fidelity took care of it once we signed the forms.

My college used Vanguard for our 403b's (my wife's school system used TIAA). When we started to invest separately from our 403b's we looked at what Vanguard, Schwab and Fidelity had and chose Fidelity because, quite frankly, Peter Lynch was running Fidelity Magellan and soundly beating the market. We invested solely in Magellan and rode that from the early 80's until around 2000 when Stansky (Lynch's 3rd successor) badly trailed the market. Then we moved to other investments. We've just stayed with Fidelity because we've been very happy with them. I did open an account at Schwab to get a good feel for their web investment platform but closed the account after a couple of month without funding it because I really didn't like the Schwab platform as much as I did Fidelity's.

There have been complaints about Vanguard's customer service and their website:
[clark.com]
[www.kiplinger.com]

…..Fidelity charged a yearly fee to manage 401k on top if the funds management fees…i transferred out….

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I reject your reality and substitute my own!

gadje,

Do you work with a certified financial advisor? If so (and you have no plans on switching to someone else anytime in the near future, ask him/her which company is better for your purposes. Mine recently recommended a switch from Fidelity to Charles Schwab. He likes the platform, the number of funds and he said it is much easier to work with them overall.

I've had account(s) with Fidelity for decades. It's worked well for me. However, as long as Charles Schwab has a well designed web site that doesn't give me agita, I'm good with switching over to it. Key, though, is a well designed web site that doesn't give me agita. Too many financial company sites are a pain in the butt. This is especially true of smaller banks.

Robert

I just started working with someone from Fidelity. They didn't really push me to roll over, they ran a portfolio analysis and gave me advice and moving forward I can continue to manage it myself, regardless if I keep it at Vanguard or move it at Fidelity.

And if I move it over, they can also manage it for me, they have several plans, but that is not a requirement. I can do it on my own if I want to.

Just thinking about consolidating accounts.

Every time I change jobs I roll my 401k into my IRA at Vanguard. Just makes things easier for me.

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Some in both of them

I use both because I got a little uneasy having all of our retirement funds at one institution. However,I don’t really know if that makes a difference as far as safety goes.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/27/2023 05:35PM by Numo.

I have a couple Vanguards. Dropped Fiddlety coz I didn't feel they watched enough and lost value on the active funds.
The passive, meh, about the same.
Two Unions 401k use Vanguard.

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Fidelity since Vanguard's poor customer service is now widely panned in online finance forums.

Local Fidelity office here as well.

Just helped a relative move to them from a smaller broker that charges a whopping 2% AUM fee.

I don’t think it matters much. I’m happy with fidelity’s banking services but I also have most of my investments with vanguard. Just no specific reason to move them.

Do you contribute to an IRA or Roth IRA? If your income is above a certain threshold, you’re better off rolling over into your current employer’s 401k so you can do a backdoor Roth contribution.

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Michael
(my wife's school system used TIAA)

Same here. When she retired a couple of years ago, we talked to a financial advisor who said he couldn’t do better than TIAA. It was nice when TIAA was a non-profit but Congress did away with that status but they still have low fees. TIAA has funds where you can invest through them with Fidelity or Vanguard.

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Quote
Numo
I use both because I got a little uneasy having all of our retirement funds at one institution. However,I don’t really know if that makes a difference as far as safety goes.

I have both as well.

Have had Fidelity for decades. That's where my Roth IRAs and non-retirement money are.

401ks are at Vanguard.

They used to all be at Fidelity, and that was uncomfortable. Then my company switched to Vanguard.