I’m a complete newbie. The only “investing” I’ve ever done is use HYSAs. Obviously the yield there, while pretty good, isn’t as good as investing in say, the S&P 500. So I want to invest a chunk of my savings into that and just leave it there until I retire. I’m not really looking into daily/active trading or anything. The problem is I don’t know how fees work with brokers.
I saw this graph a while ago so I was thinking of Fidelty. It also helps that I already have an account there for my employer RSUs and my 401k. On the other hand, a colleague of mine suggested Schwab and said they don’t have any fees.
Can anyone suggest the best broker (minimal/no fees, easy-to-use, set-and-forget) that I should go with if I just want to invest in the S&P 500?
Vanguard is pretty good.
Thanks for the suggestion. Do they charge fees and are they not expensive?
All brokers cost money. I find the expenses to be reasonable. If you really want a dollars and cents answer you should do real research and find out the fees of each broker.
I use Fidelity as I was in a similar situation as you and got it set up by my employer to receive RSUs.
No complaints if you are a casual investor. They have very good apps, tools and service.
With another employer I had Schwab. It’s very similar if I’m being honest, I didn’t notice that much difference personally as I’m not actively day trading nor doing anything too complex. When I switched jobs I just closed those accounts since I have everything else already in Fidelity (HSA, Checking account, 401k) so easier to just keep up with a single place.
Either way I think you’ll do fine!
Thanks. I might try Fidelity if no one else says otherwise.
You won’t be making a mistake by picking Fidelity. Vanguard is also a good choice as others have said. Fidelity generally has a better UI than Vanguard if that is important to you.
Just a tip, don’t dump it all in at once. Spread it out over 12 months or so. This will prevent losing too much money when the market crashes. It is called dollar-cost averaging.
There’s quite a bit of research on lump sum investing vs dollar cost averaging. Here is one example: https://investor.vanguard.com/investor-resources-education/news/lump-sum-investing-versus-cost-averaging-which-is-better
Generally lump sum investing comes out ahead by a bit. However, my personal opinion is that it isn’t enough to always point to it and say that’s what you should do. If you’re more comfortable doing one over the other, then do it.
Generally time in the market beats timing the market, which is what you’d be doing by dollar cost averaging because you think the market is going to crash.
The ‘dollar cost averaging’ narrative started as a response to people who wanted to hoard a portion of their monthly paycheck waiting for a good time/correction to buy into the market. It’s essentially a corollary of ‘time in market beats timing market,’ and both could be stated as ‘invest it all, right now.’ Especially if your horizon is 10+ years out: a few percentage points today is nothing to the doubling you can expect in a decade.
Thank you! That’s a good idea and I will keep that in mind.
Many credit unions have financial advisors on staff, and you can use them at no cost.
If you belong to a credit union, or if you’ve been thinking of joining one, it’s worth calling them up first.
A recommendation from the “Boglehead” community within personal finance circles is this book, which is a good primer for getting started with investing. https://www.bogleheads.org/blog/portfolio/the-bogleheads-guide-to-investing/
It includes a discussion highly germane to Americans, but it may also be broadly applicable in aspects such as managing risk and timescales, especially the difference between younger investors with the capacity and time horizon to save, versus late-starters with less time available for compound interest to work its magic.
This is the book I lend to friends, and would recommend.
