fwellimort wrote: ↑Wed Jul 28, 2021 5:52 pm
My experience with Fidelity and Vanguard has been:
1. Fidelity customer service is more readily available. You need help at Sunday 4:23 AM? Fidelity has that covered. You lost your credit card or your credit card got hacked? Fidelity will send you a new credit card OVER NIGHT.
2. Average wait time on Vanguard phone calls feel much longer and the other side of the call seems less knowledgeable overall (compared to Fidelity counterpart). That said, when you call these brokerages, do expect to be on hold for quite some time depending on the day.
3. Fidelity UI seems far more intuitive than Vanguard UI. Vanguard UI feels like something in the early 2000s. Where's my partial share trading?
4. It's definitely noticeable Fidelity is investing more on the UI space. The mobile apps are far more up-to-date at Fidelity over Vanguard (which looks like series of HTML pages instead of an actual phone app).
5. Fidelity gives me Turbotax Premier for free. Does Vanguard do that? No.
6. Fidelity Cash Management is so easy to use. I get my paycheck from that account and I can immediately invest. Also, all withdrawals/transfers have 0 fees and are quite immediate. Even the ATM fees are waived!
7. Vanguard really underpays its workers (relative to the market) in the software industry. All the while Vanguard praises its mutual fund structure when its management is being very well paid. I would rather support a brokerage that treats its employees better if the products on both are near identical.
Also, I have acted like a naive investor at both Fidelity and Vanguard phone call service (twice on each):
1. Fidelity recommended me to look into its low cost index funds including ZERO funds and kept stressing how low fees their funds across the board. In other words, Fidelity was recommending me low cost funds.
2. Vanguard on other hand kept trying to sell me PAS. No thanks. It seemed to be on a race to grab as much money as possible in the 'low cost' space.
3. Fidelity recommended a free advisor scheduling if one really wants guidance (which is common in most major brokerages). The advisor saw my portfolio of low cost index funds and simply told me that I was doing well unless I needed some additional help. While this is a sample size of 1, I am hesitant I would have gotten the same advice at Vanguard with how much Vanguard tries to shove PAS on its homepage.
Personally, I really don't see why people stick with Vanguard today in this low interest rate environment. Vanguard at times has much better money market funds and specific municipal bond funds.
However, outside that space, I just don't see what Vanguard has over a brokerage like Fidelity.
And the argument is especially hard to make since all the major Vanguard funds have ETF equivalents. And Fidelity allows partial share purchasing of those ETFs (and it also has its own set of near-identical mutual funds).
I also hear great things about Schwab (and the checking account is especially useful when traveling abroad). The only annoyance I have with Schwab is (as of right now), there's no partial share trading for ETFs. That said, Schwab also has its own set of great mutual funds so there's that.
Anyways, at end of day, pick whichever brokerage one is most comfortable sleeping in bed with.
To me, that's Fidelity. I dislike Vanguard constantly bombarding the home screen with PAS.
Many others here like Schwab, a brokerage known for great customer service too.
I have my money at both Fidelity and Vanguard. My main money is at Fidelity. Personally, if I could redo everything, I would have never opened the Vanguard account. Just too much of a headache to manage multiple brokerages.
And if I wanted to open an account today with non-existent customer service, I would personally look into a brokerage like M1 Finance for its pie portfolio structure.
Anyways, at end of day, if you are only buying something like VTI VXUS BND (or its mutual fund equivalent), it really doesn't matter which brokerage you stick with in terms of long term ROI.