When you say “fund”, do you mean mutual fund or are you using that as a more general term to describe funds and ETF’s?
I have some of each (ETFs and mutual funds). The mutual funds I pick are passive index funds and very low expense. I have not worried too much about which of the two I buy if the expenses are low and it tracks what I want it to track - should I be buying ETFs only?
I’m no expert but I don’t see much difference between an ETF and a passively-managed mutual fund. Actively-managed funds are a different beast, I personally would always avoid.
One difference for which I might’ve preferred a mutual fund is that ETFs can only be bought in whole shares. I invest $450 every 2 weeks. My more expensive VTI fund is at something like $260/share. Therefore I often have to buy both VTI and a few VXUS shares at the same time, or have a couple hundred just sitting out there for 2 weeks until I add more.
Bit of a shift in my thinking for 2024. As I just noted above I add $450 biweekly to my brokerage account. The brokerage account has grown to larger than necessary over the years. It was supposed to cover large purchases like a new vehicle. Or the shed we just bought for $15,000. But over the years when we’ve needed/wanted those things, we’ve bought with our bank account emergency fund and then stayed frugal for a while. (Acknowledging our most expensive car ever was $12,000.)
Now the brokerage is at about $130,000 and I’m adding $11,700 annually. I’m thinking any day here, I’ll just sell $14,000 of it and stuff it into 2 Traditional IRAs. Continue as normal, then next year when it’s grown by another (11,700 + gains on $116,000) I will do the same.
We’re already filling our family HSA, and this will be the first year we max both 401ks. All else I can think to do is start a 529 for our future kid, which we plan to do.
A friend of ours has a legitimate photography side business and “employs” his 1-year-old to take photos of and use for advertisement on his website. The baby makes $7,000/year and it goes into her Roth IRA. He plans to have a little under $300,000 saved for her retirement by the time she graduates college.
I’ll be honest, it’s tempting. I’m wondering if my baby could also be a model for his website. I don’t think I want to go through all the work of creating an actual business (even if I might only do 1 thing every year other than take a picture of my baby.)
I’ll second what Rastiln said and add a couple other comments. You of course have it right that the expense ratio is the number one criteria, but there are other pros/cons of each vehicle. Generally avoid the actively managed mutual funds with higher expenses. Besides expense drag, every time they change the portfolio creates a potential capital gain or loss. ETFs don’t typically create any capital gain/loss until you sell them. Of course dividends received are a taxable event with either ETF’s or mutual funds.
You can buy and sell ETF’s during the trading day like a stock, where mutual funds close at the end of the day. Advantage ETF in my opinion.
Mutual funds allow you to purchase partial shares, which is a nice advantage if you are into dollar cost averaging by making regular purchases of a set amount. ETF’s are whole shares.
I appreciate this sentiment and agree. That doesn’t mean I always follow it. I’ve got a chunk in Vanguard Wellington Fund Admiral (VWENX) that I’ve owned for a very long time at a 0.17% expense ratio. I’m breaking my own rule and still sleeping well at night. 
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Mutual funds and ETFs are basically the same thing these days
The key difference is NEVER hold mutual funds in a non tax advantaged account.
With the widespread adoption of fraction share investing and extremely low admin expenses, ETFs are in my opinion superior to mutual funds
I think mutual funds are slowly dying and will continue to lose ground to ETFs as passive investing continues to catch on
Opened a 529 - I think. Set it all up to push over $3,000.
Got to a final confirmation screen, “Please click Continue or there may be a delay in seeing your 529 account”. Clicked Continue, screen switches to an error message including the phrase “CANNOT POST”.
Try to go back to my main page, Vanguard is experiencing technical issues. No idea if it worked.
The account isn’t in Vanguard. I haven’t seen a pull from my bank account. I’m going to give it a few hours before I try again.
completed this yesterday. own two homes (long story, but one is rented out) and both have loans. made a one time payment to the rental of ~$9K. Along with scheduled monthly additional principal payments set up, the combined will bring the 2024 debt reduction to $14K overall.
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Well, Vanguard still doesn’t show my 529, but looks like it may take up to 48 hours. Trying to open one again says my SS# is already registered for that account.
FWIW, Vanguard’s interface for a 529 looks simple but works terribly. It failed on me multiple times partway through, just taking me back to the landing screen when I hit Continue on this or that.
You can buy vanguard ETFs anywhere, I don’t know why you would limit your finances to the Vanguard platform if you aren’t impressed with it.
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Daily maintenance has never bothered me, and it’s been like 5 years since I last opened an account there. And I’d really rather not split my investments into a third service. Best to keep it as close as possible if there’s not a good reason to do otherwise.
However if I wasn’t already in Vanguard I’d consider elsewhere. I’m guessing this shows up in a day or two and we’re cooking with gas.
The internal expense structure may in fact differ, often making the ETF a slightly better value.
But also, I hate how mutual funds can only be traded once a day at the instance of market close. I don’t know why that is, but it is a hassle sometimes.
These 2 reasons are enough for me to prefer ETFs.
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I thought you were a fidelity fan
Anyways it takes a few days for any account to be up and running. I had to wait a pay cycle for my 401k to get into the system. Just set up a solo 401k for my wife and that took about a week as well
I set up a 529 a few years ago when bb number 1 was born. I think it took a few days as well
All with the same broker so you would think they could process my stuff a bit quicker
I have one Fidelity and one Principal account by necessity and can’t say I like either, nor did I like T Rowe Price when forced to use it. But nah, other than this hiccup, I’m alright with Vanguard. They’re a fan of revamping their interface to be worse, but still hasn’t really bothered me.
The 529 does show up today! Currently we are putting $100/month into it. With the $3,000 initial deposit, that should grow to $50,000 over 18 years.
We will put more money into that as time goes on, but we are still creeping all our retirement accounts up toward max contributions. We’ll be up from about 50% to 80% of max on our available retirement accounts.
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Back when my 401k was a bigger share of my assets I would time rebalancing towards the end of the trading day so that I’d have a clear picture of what the results would be. Now I have rolled over most of the retirement assets to an IRA this is not really a concern.
I said this in the 2023 thread but it better belongs here
Because I have enough money at Schwab, they throw some services my way. I took advantage of their financial planner/ financial modeling service. I was going to do this anyway per the above, but the modeling confirmed it as a slam dunk.
I’m going to get this rolling sometime later in 2024
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What is the consideration on that? RMDs will push you into a higher tax bracket?
Exactly. Taking tax hits over the next 10 years with a Roth conversion will result in much lower overall tax paid. I think it’s probably a conservative estimate of savings, as I believe long term that tax rates have to increase.
Of course there are lots of moving parts (tax brackets+rates, RMD rules, Additional Medicare premiums for high earners, medicare surtax on investment income,…).
Occurs to me this is our final year we can invest in Roth IRAs without backdooring. Assuming we have any 2024 bonus paid in 2025, we will be locked out by income.