Vanguard Removes Annual Account Fee

Written by Nickel - 6 Comments

In case you didn’t know, Vanguard has traditionally levied a $10 annual account fee on IRAs (traditional, Roth, or SEP) and ESAs with a balance of less than $5,000, index fund accounts with a balance of less than $10,000, and all non-retirement accounts with a balance of less than $2,500. Going forward, they’ve decided to levy a $20 fee for each Vanguard fund in which you have a balance of less than $10,000. The good news here is that you avoid these fees entirely by signing up for electronic delivery of shareholder materials (statements, confirmations, and so on). Of course, you could consolidate funds to get over the minimums, or maintain $100,000 or more in total Vanguard investments. But if that’s not your cup of tea, simply signing up for electronic delivery is your best bet. In our case, we actually signed up for this long ago to stem the flow of paperwork into our mailbox.

[Source: Vanguard.com]

Published on April 26th, 2007 - 6 Comments
Filed under: Saving & Investing
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About the author: Nickel is the founder and editor-in-chief of this site. He's a thirty-something family man who has been writing about personal finance since 2005, and guess what? He's on Twitter!

Comments (scroll down to add your own):

I know these fees too well, and hate them. That’s awesome they’re waiving the fee, I’m signing up for eDelivery today!
Comment by Ben — Apr 26th 2007 @ 2:57 pm
Thanks for the heads-up, I hate fees of all kinds. I wonder if this should change my plans for moving all retirement funds to ETFs?
Comment by Groucho — Apr 26th 2007 @ 5:31 pm
Oops … looks like I’ll be signing up for e-delivery.
Comment by Lin — Apr 26th 2007 @ 7:29 pm
Nice; I just opened an account with them half a year ago and am a bit under the $10k (as it is a roth and I can’t contribute that much at once).

Time for edelivery; this will certainly save them more than the $10 that they used to get just by not having to send out all that mail.
Comment by Blaine Moore — Apr 27th 2007 @ 9:18 am
It would be nice if this new fee system was an option mandated only for new accounts. My spouse does not use email or computers at all. I would like to avoid the increased fees on my existing accounts but if something happened to me, my spouse would not know how to access the accounts with no paper. I wonder in twenty more years if I will remember I have the accounts without at least one paper statement a year.
Comment by David — May 19th 2007 @ 5:15 pm