Vanguard Review

Vanguard Wrap Fees and Premium Offerings

Vanguard’s Premium offering, or purchased Advice Packages, allows you to receive advice from financial consultants via phone and/ or email. If you are a “Retirement Plan Client”, you receive advisory services through an employer-sponsored retirement plan as a part of our Vanguard at Work offering.

Monitoring

As part of all our service offerings, our software monitors your account. We also offer a feature for certain accounts that gradually automatically rebalance your account becoming more conservative over time. If enabled, the robo-advisor automatically adjusts your portfolio’s allocation to gradually become more conservative. Our algorithms are developed and overseen by our investment advisory personnel.

Investment Authority

Vanguard needs permission from the client to use discretionary authority, which means Vanguard can buy and sell investments on your behalf when Vanguard determines it is appropriate to do so. Vanguard trades in response to your actions (such as asset allocation changes, deposits, or withdrawals), to rebalance your accounts, or to otherwise further your investment goals.

Investment Offering

Vanguard constructed portfolio strategies are sets of globally diversified stock and bond allocations, which we construct from generally low-cost, liquid, index-tracking exchange-traded funds (“ETFs”). Certain portfolio strategies utilizing vanguard ETFs are available only to clients with Third Party access.

Account Minimums and Other Requirements

No minimum account size is required to open or maintain a Digital account. The minimum initial deposit is $10. To be eligible for their Premium offering, you must maintain a balance of at least $100,000 in securities (excluding Vanguard for Advisors, Vanguard at Work, and HSA accounts).

Cash Reserve

Cash Reserve is only available to clients of Vanguard LLC, which is not a bank, and cash transfers to program banks are conducted through the clients’ brokerage accounts at Vanguard Securities. There are no fees to open, no annual fees, and no transaction fees. Worldwide ATM withdrawal are free. These numbers are hard to beat and you may want to move a portion of your cash to Vanguard for diversification and to lower your Cash transaction fees.

• Cash account earning a variable 0.75%*
• Bucket money for individual goals and plans
• FDIC-insured up to $1M with their program banks

Digital Advisor

Fees: 0.25% per year plus low cost ETF minimums

Vanguard’s investment advice is available for 0.25% per year with no minimum balance. Vanguard calls this their Digital plan because you receive our advice online. Human and/or Certified Financial Planners are not available at the Digital Advisor level.

Premium Plan

Fees: 0.40% per year for licensed human experts at $100,000 account minimum

For 0.40% per year, you can also gain over-the-phone and/or email access to Vanguard’s team of licensed financial experts who can provide in-depth advice on investments on your holistic investing portfolio. This Premium plan requires a minimum balance of $100,000.

Large Asset Portfolio

Fees: 0.15% per year for Digital Advisor, and .30% for the Premium Plan

For balances in excess of $2 million, the Digital plan charges 0.15% per year and the Premium plan charges 0.30% on the portion of your balance above $2 million. If you qualify for part of your balances to be managed free and have a balance above $2 million, the dollars managed free will be those with the higher fee.

For either plan, Vanguard calculates your fee daily and Vanguard we can accurately account for deposits, withdrawals and market fluctuations that occur. Vanguard then totals the fees from those daily calculations each month, billing you a fraction of the total annual fee. This means that if you withdraw your balance before the end of the month, you’re only charged the fee for the days your money was managed by Vanguard.

What does the fee get you? It covers the advice you receive, the transactions, trades, transfers, and rebalancing we manage for you, and all other account administration. We do not charge you additional transaction fees to buy and sell securities in the Large Asset Portfolio account class.

Advisory services

Advisory services may be provided by Vanguard LLC, a registered investment advisor. If a customer wishes to fund an investment goal and use Vanguard’s advisory services beyond advice and planning tools, the your account will be charged a 0.25% annual fee, under the Digital plan.

Digital investing 0.25% per year of account balances.

• Low-cost algorithmic investing portfolios managed based on your priorities
• Socially responsible investing options
• Account choices, including joint accounts, IRAs, and trusts
• Automatic features like portfolio rebalancing, dividend reinvestment, and auto-adjust
• Advanced tax-saving strategies like Tax Loss Harvesting+ and asset location
• Add Checking and Cash Reserve with no additional fees

Bonds

Securities Range of Fees from Participation in Selling Group for Fixed income investors:

Range of Fees from Underwriting

• Agency/GSE 0.05% to 1.00% of the investment amount
• Corporate Notes 0.01% to 2.5% of the investment amount
• Corporate Bonds 0.01% to 3.0% of the investment amount
• 0.05% to 3.0% of the investment amount
• Municipal Bonds and Taxable 0.1% to 2% of the investment amount
• Structured Products (Registered Notes) 0.05% to 5.0% of the investment amount

Vanguard Go

A diversified portfolio of Vanguard stock and bond funds, seeking to track the market and managed over time. It offers stock and ETF trades, these investment strategies, asset class, and trading platforms make Vanguard Go an attractive investment strategy and can support reduced expense ratios.

Retirement planning tools personalized to an individual investor’s retirement or savings goal.

No minimum account amount required.

$10,000 to $49,999 thousand charges $3 months per month.

$50,000 and up charges 0.35% of the account balance.

Single Retirement Fund

A target dated fund that adjusts asset allocation over time based on the retirement year

No account minimum needed

0.12%-0.75% annual expense ratio

Vanguard has a 24/7 chatbot, but unfortunately it timed out on me before I could speak to anyone.

Call Vanguard directly at 718-400-6898 Monday through Friday, 9:00am-6:00pm (ET).

Live chat agents are available online Monday through Friday 8 a.m. – 10 p.m. as well as Saturday and Sunday 9 a.m. – 4 p.m.

Email is available 24/7 at [email protected]

Satisfaction Guarantee

If for any reason you are not completely satisfied with your Vanguard investment account, Vanguard will do everything they can to make it right, up to and including waiving Vanguard’s management fees on your investment account for the next 90 days.

Individual Cash Reserve accounts have FDIC insurance up to $1M and joint Cash Reserve accounts offer up to $2M in FDIC insurance once funds are deposited into our program banks†.

Funds deposited into Checking are FDIC-insured up to $250K for individual accounts and up to $250K per depositor for joint accounts, provided by NBKC bank, Member FDIC.

Vanguard Safety Policies

Vanguard also uses certain technologies to help protect your account:

• Vanguard website employs various security features—visible and invisible—to help keep you safe.
• Vanguard SimpliSpeak biometric login
• Vanguard MyVoice biometric login
• Internal controls
• Customer verification
• Restricted customer data access
• Fraud detection
• Employee security trainings
• Encrypted communications

Vanguard Education

Vanguard’s educational resources and offerings are best for low-cost low-trade investors. They offer easy to read and understand guides to take investors step by step from “What is the market” to “How does the robo-advisor change when my IRA changes?”.

There was no real time or market research information available.