|
pmchem posted:I have a family member whose small business is trying to decide on a 401k for its employees. The provider would need to handle payroll deductions, etc. Vanguard also offers a pretty cheap plan for small businesses. It's actually serviced by Ascensus, so it annoyingly doesn't use Vanguard's normal site, but the funds are good. It doesn't have a mega-backdoor option, but that's to be expected for a cheap small business plan. Haven't seen the Fidelity offering before, so it may very well be better.
|
#
?
Nov 1, 2022 22:25
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 30, 2024 16:30 |
|
|
Ally up to 2.5%.
|
|
#
?
Nov 1, 2022 22:47
|
|
|
InvisiBill posted:I’m on the road today, but we have been using Employee Fiduciary for four years. Very low cost, but minimal hand holding. I’d be happy to answer more when I’m home tonight. yeah, that one came up in my own searching. good to have the additional comment that someone here likes it. they're transparent about pricing, which is nice. https://www.employeefiduciary.com/401k-plan-pricing if you have other comments, I'd love to pass them along. Leperflesh posted:Fidelity is now offering a Pooled Employer Plan (PEP) that lowers costs significantly. It places multiple companies' employees into a single plan so that the total amount invested rises to a level that they can keep fees low. I have no opinion about whether this is a good or terrible idea. This plan, I guess? https://www.fidelityworkplace.com/s/401ksmallbusiness The quoted overview fees look reasonable, if those prices hold up after contacting them: https://www.fidelityworkplace.com/s/401ksmallbusiness-pricing I've never used Fidelity but know they're quite a well-rounded brokerage firm. The fund lineup here: https://www.fidelityworkplace.com/s/401ksmallbusiness-investments seems super limited, but it has low ER target dates, which covers 99% of needs. Actually the MFs advertised there claim to have zero % expense ratio, which is... a bit surprising across the entire lineup? Wonder if there's a different catch I'm missing or if they just use the general 401k AUM fee to cover it (probably that). runawayturtles posted:Vanguard also offers a pretty cheap plan for small businesses. It's actually serviced by Ascensus, so it annoyingly doesn't use Vanguard's normal site, but the funds are good. It doesn't have a mega-backdoor option, but that's to be expected for a cheap small business plan. I couldn't actually get details on their pricing at either Asc's or VG's site (anyone find that?). You eventually land at a 'contact us' page where I guess they quote you prices later. For example, https://institutional.vanguard.com/401k-plans/vrpa/small-and-midsized-plan-recordkeeping.html leads to https://institutional.vanguard.com/utility/request-information.html To be honest, I find Vanguard's new-look website to be very bad (and even functionally incorrect sometimes!), but I do appreciate their generally low fees. I think Employee Fiduciary prices out one example of their all-in fees vs. VG on their site. At first glance, the advertised pricing for fidelity and EF would be similar (who wins would depend on exact AUM). I wonder if EF has transaction fees for MFs? Both would be better than 401go or usa401k. EF seems to have many more fund options than fidelity.
|
|
#
?
Nov 1, 2022 23:08
|
|
|
additional complication: they use gusto for payroll which is apparently a big integration issue for 401k admins. may limit the options.
|
|
#
?
Nov 1, 2022 23:14
|
|
|
Lol vanguards new app and website are def not good. For years their reputation was “website works but is super ugly), and they’ve overcompensated and focused on graphics and lost functionality. I’ll keep vanguard damnit, but it’s annoying because they’re company is supposed to be the epitome of the “middle ground.”
|
|
#
?
Nov 2, 2022 00:40
|
|
|
Duckman2008 posted:Lol vanguards new app and website are def not good. For years their reputation was “website works but is super ugly), and they’ve overcompensated and focused on graphics and lost functionality. Yeah, so the thing is when I can't figure out their stupid web site choices immediately I just call them. And someone can always tell me what I need to know. Frustrating, but not catastrophic.
|
|
#
?
Nov 2, 2022 00:51
|
|
|
I'm going to be rich. Just found an EE savings bond. I wish they still issued paper bonds because they look so cool.
|
|
#
?
Nov 2, 2022 01:50
|
|
|
Duckman2008 posted:Ally up to 2.5%. VMFXX (Vanguard Federal Money Market Fund) is at 2.90%, and 4 week Tbills are at 3.73%. That money market is over half in fed overnight repo, so yields should be headed up over the next week or so after the Fed announcement tomorrow. Do better, banks. Also, dont give banks your cash at that rate, thread readers drk fucked around with this message at 02:02 on Nov 2, 2022 |
|
#
?
Nov 2, 2022 01:55
|
|
|
pmchem posted:I couldn't actually get details on their pricing at either Asc's or VG's site (anyone find that?). You eventually land at a 'contact us' page where I guess they quote you prices later. For example, Yeah, you have to speak with Vanguard and they send you a proposal. They only charge a flat fee based on number of participants, not AUM (although AUM might be a factor in the proposed flat numbers). Our proposal looked something like this: Installation: $1,500 1-15 total participants: ~$4,000 / year 16-50 total participants: ~$4,000 + $75 per participant over 15 / year etc. The annual fee can be covered by the company, the participants, or both. Overall this is a great deal for me especially; I mentioned when we switched that I alone accounted for over 30% of the plan's assets after a roll-in, so losing the AUM fee from our old plan is saving me a ton more than everyone else.
|
|
#
?
Nov 2, 2022 02:42
|
|
|
drk posted:VMFXX (Vanguard Federal Money Market Fund) is at 2.90%, and 4 week Tbills are at 3.73%. Yeah now that my original 1 year went through at about 4.6% and now I'm looking to put a lot more money into this for shorter terms. I've been holding this money trying to buy a house but I'm probably gonna delay until Jan+.
|
|
#
?
Nov 2, 2022 02:56
|
|
|
pmchem posted:additional complication: they use gusto for payroll which is apparently a big integration issue for 401k admins. may limit the options. My partner used Gusto before she sold most of her business. She had her 401k setup with Guideline. She was around 10 employees. It seemed like it was fairly priced and the gusto integration was excellent (it has been about a year since she had them now though). https://www.guideline.com/pricing
|
|
#
?
Nov 2, 2022 03:24
|
|
|
drk posted:VMFXX (Vanguard Federal Money Market Fund) is at 2.90%, and 4 week Tbills are at 3.73%. How easy is it to liquidate as needed for VMFXX, 4 week T bill investments? I've got about $50k in a HYSA at 2.5,% which is my secondary 'emergency fund', I didn't realize VMFXX and 4 week Tbills were that high. Conceivably I could handle < 48 hour emergencies with similar cash on hand and credit cards as needed, but would taking money out within 5 business days be feasible for emergency?
|
|
#
?
Nov 2, 2022 05:41
|
|
|
VMFXX is the default settlement account for Vanguard Brokerage accounts, so transfers are pretty quick (a couple days for ACH, wire should be quicker). I believe you can also set up checkwriting but I havent used it. Treasuries are normal marketable securities so I'd think it would be a couple days to settle a sale + a couple more to transfer out via ACH. Maybe faster - both things happen at once in the other direction (you dont need to wait for inbound ACH transfers to finish to buy securities).
|
|
#
?
Nov 2, 2022 07:36
|
|
|
VMFXX has tax implications right? and if you took out your money early you'd be dealing with penalties?
Strong Sauce fucked around with this message at 08:50 on Nov 2, 2022 |
|
#
?
Nov 2, 2022 08:09
|
|
|
I am trying to put away money for a house, I started putting cash in index funds again about a year and a half ago, things have gone well since then as you can tell (ouch) but I'm in for the long haul so am hoping things will turn out ok. I'm just wondering whether I should be putting money anywhere near the market at the moment at all, or whether I should wait until like mid next year to see if there's a big recession. I have cash I want to put somewhere that doesn't suck but I'm thinking (given how badly the shares in funds I have are doing at the moment after the last year or so of awful performance) that maybe I should just put cash in a 2% interest account and wait to see if the storm hits? Or is that stupid. Maybe I should be putting more into funds now in the expectation that index funds will start performing well again at some point in the next year or so? But that feels like sunk cost fallacy. For reference, I have half my current savings in Vaguard lifestrategy acc 80% equity, and the other half in an L&G global tech index fund. It's not a huge amount so I hadn't yet managed to diversify into lots of different kinds of funds. Also I'm in the UK so I imagine sterling's terrible performance is hitting me badly too for some of this. But then again looking at the top performing 100 tracker funds that my online broker offers, basically all of them show poor performance over the past year and a half (unsurprisingly). El Grillo fucked around with this message at 11:57 on Nov 2, 2022 |
|
#
?
Nov 2, 2022 11:50
|
|
|
drk posted:VMFXX (Vanguard Federal Money Market Fund) is at 2.90%, and 4 week Tbills are at 3.73%. So if I move my ally money to vanguard I could be getting 2.9%? Can I buy 4 week tbills through ally/vanguard?
|
|
#
?
Nov 2, 2022 13:34
|
|
|
you can buy treasuries in a brokerage account yeah
|
|
#
?
Nov 2, 2022 13:54
|
|
|
El Grillo posted:I am trying to put away money for a house, I started putting cash in index funds again about a year and a half ago, things have gone well since then as you can tell (ouch) but I'm in for the long haul so am hoping things will turn out ok. Don't time the market. But also, the market is (sometimes?) not the best place for things like house funds if you have a specific date you're trying to hit (as you have seen).
|
|
#
?
Nov 2, 2022 13:57
|
|
|
drk posted:VMFXX (Vanguard Federal Money Market Fund) is at 2.90%, and 4 week Tbills are at 3.73%. You are technically correct. Chasing a few bucks of yield a month on my emergency fund is completely pointless and not worth the effort.
|
|
#
?
Nov 2, 2022 14:04
|
|
|
CubicalSucrose posted:Don't time the market. But also, the market is (sometimes?) not the best place for things like house funds if you have a specific date you're trying to hit (as you have seen). ...But if you're going into the market, don't time the market. And right now stocks are on sale! (Which should not matter to your short-to-medium term house buying plan.)
|
|
#
?
Nov 2, 2022 14:32
|
|
|
Am I correct in assuming that 3.73% interest rate on four week T-bills is annualized, and not actually what you get each four week period? The treasury website makes it sound like the latter, but that is way too good to be true.
|
|
#
?
Nov 2, 2022 15:29
|
|
|
come on man edit: I guess I will be slightly more helpful: https://www.treasurydirect.gov/marketable-securities/understanding-pricing/ here is where you can learn how pricing of treasuries works KYOON GRIFFEY JR fucked around with this message at 15:37 on Nov 2, 2022 |
|
#
?
Nov 2, 2022 15:33
|
|
|
Is there a reason to think that the Vanguard Money Market fund will pay significantly less than a HYSA? I've stuck with Ally for my emergency fund, but it would take 30 seconds to move some money to Vanguard, and it ends up being a decent chunk of money for the year. It would also be nice to consolidate with Vanguard.
|
|
#
?
Nov 2, 2022 15:44
|
|
|
My understanding is that money market funds always pay more than HYSAs. Also important to note that money market funds do not have FDIC protection.
|
|
#
?
Nov 2, 2022 15:47
|
|
|
laxbro posted:My understanding is that money market funds always pay more than HYSAs.
|
|
#
?
Nov 2, 2022 16:00
|
|
|
laxbro posted:My understanding is that money market funds always pay more than HYSAs. Also important to note that money market funds do not have FDIC protection. They were below 0 when rates were 0% the last two years, basically from Q2 2020 through Q2 2022. Also from Q1 2012 until Q2 2017. There is a .11 ER on the fund as well.
|
|
#
?
Nov 2, 2022 16:21
|
|
|
pmchem posted:additional complication: they use gusto for payroll which is apparently a big integration issue for 401k admins. may limit the options. Doesn't Gusto also have a 401k program? That may be the easiest thing to implement. For Employee Fiduciary, start up and annual fees are pretty flat (listed on their website). There are additional fees for things like moving money out of the plan ($50) (after termination/death/retirement), loans ($50), 5500 forms, annual testing, plan amendments/changes, etc, but those have been pretty reasonable. I sit on our 401k committee, and I was involved in selecting EF, with the other competition being Guideline, ADP, Morgan Stanley, Empower, Ubiquity, Vanguard. We ruled out ADP, Morgan Stanley, Empower pretty quickly from a fee stand point. Vanguard didn't want us as we were too small for their plans (Hence many plans using Ascensus ). The plans offer a lot of flexibility (check boxes on what you want or don't want in a plan), but they don't offer any real advice on what may be the best item for the company. In our case, we designed our plan to have a Safe Harbor Match of up to 4% for everyone, while also allowing the plan to have discretionary match and profit sharing contributions for all non-union employees. When we first designed the plan, we didn't think much of the second and third choices, but as we've had some profitable years, the company has contributed to the profit sharing side of things. Great! However, we selected the allocation to be pro-rata, based on an individuals salary. It might have been cheaper for the company, and more beneficial to company ownership, to have selected a new comparability plan, which has a lot of actuarial rules that I don't feel confident in explaining, but might have saved the company about 15% to 20% in contributions while allowing ownership to max out the available 401k space. This would mean less money to the employees. The point is, that while EF would do a plan that has new comparability testing (and charge for the testing), they are not going to advise if this is a good or bad idea for the company. We went it alone with out an advisor, and I feel we would do so again, but be aware that there are things that might be left unsaid that you want to consider. Our experiences: Compnay management selected that statements be mailed to participants every quarter (at the company expense), but this hasn't happened each quarter. EF doesn't always play well with tools like Personal Capital, but I haven't had any issues for several months. I do have a period of about 6 weeks where it didn't update, but that's not the end of the world. EF reports accounts to Personal Capital as only a 401k plan, not breaking things down into Traditional or Roth. The online portal will easily give this breakdown though. EF doesn't allow for seperate asset allocations on the Roth vs Traditional side. I don't know how easy or not that is with other providers. We do all of our bookkeeping/payroll in house (using Sage software). This has been relatively easy to do with EF. I don't have any experience using a third party payroll company like ADP or Gusto. EF has a very large family of funds to chose from. At the time the plan was set up, they sent over a spreadsheet of 10k some funds. You're allowed to select up to 40 funds, and we have 35 options for our employees (most of which are Target Date, the rest are index choices). We selected almost all Vanguard funds. From what I can tell, there is no additional fund expense, aside from the annual 0.08% charged by the plan custodian (Matrix Trust Company, who holds the funds for EF). Employee participation: Most of our non-union employees participate. About 80% of our union employees do as well. One thing I wished EF had was documentation in Spanish to hand out, but that is not available. From what I can tell, most of our employees have not activated their EF account, which is website only (no mobile app), but this probably means that employees are less likely to freak out and sell out of a target date fund when the markets are down. Customer service with EF has been decent, not great. We had a very responsive rep for the first 6 months after onboarding, then got moved to a permanent rep after that. She's been ok, but not all of our questions have been understood immediately, she'll often go to the compliance team for an answer, and then we get an answer to a similar, but not exactly our question. This has lead to delays in our annual compliance testing. Nothing earth shattering, but I can't make a 100% endorsement because of that. Our current plan includes the following: Traditional and Roth options. Mega-Backdoor Roth is allowed (but nobody is participating- this adds more compliance testing headaches, so management is not doing this, but would allow for employees to do so) Safe Harbor Match of up to 4%. (looking back at this, doing a flat 3% contribution might have made more sense, in allowing flexibility for a profit sharing contribution to be made with new comparability testing) Discretionary Match (currently set at 0%)-This has a vesting period, to encourage employees to stay. This currently only applies to non-union employees. Profit Sharing Contribution- this is at the company's discretion. Three years ago we did a flat 2%, two years ago 5%, and last year was 7%. This has a vesting period, to encourage employees to stay. This currently only applies to non-union employees. All in all, we've been satisfied with EF. We've finished up 3 years with them, and are not looking to replace them, but this is partly inertia. If we used a third party payroll company, I would have looked more closely into Gusto/Guideline/ADP
|
|
#
?
Nov 2, 2022 16:42
|
|
|
Strong Sauce posted:VMFXX has tax implications right? and if you took out your money early you'd be dealing with penalties? What tax implications do you mean? The income from it is taxable (though VMFXX may be exempt from state tax as it only holds federal government obligations, I haven't looked into this). Money market accounts are not fixed term, so there are no fees or penalties for withdrawing. As mentioned, Vanguard actually uses VMFXX as the default settlement account, so its where your money lives when it isnt invested in anything else (could be a few days, could be indefinitely).
|
|
#
?
Nov 2, 2022 17:09
|
|
|
spwrozek posted:There is a .11 ER on the fund as well. This is true, but the 2.90% I mentioned is the SEC yield, so it is net of fees.
|
|
#
?
Nov 2, 2022 17:13
|
|
|
laxbro posted:Also important to note that money market funds do not have FDIC protection. Oh. Right.  edit: But it's SIPC insured right? Residency Evil fucked around with this message at 18:16 on Nov 2, 2022 |
|
#
?
Nov 2, 2022 18:01
|
|
|
If you're at Fidelity SPRXX, their equivalent, is at 2.96
|
|
#
?
Nov 2, 2022 18:15
|
|
|
Residency Evil posted:Oh. Right. Yes, it is SIPC insured, but SIPC doesnt protect your money market from losing value, it protects you against failure of the brokerage firm. edit: more SIPC info here A money market that is entirely in federal government obligations like VMFXX should be considered essentially risk free though. That is, the only real risk of it not returning your money implies the government defaulting on its debts in which case you have a bigger problem and deposit accounts arent safe either. drk fucked around with this message at 18:57 on Nov 2, 2022 |
|
#
?
Nov 2, 2022 18:53
|
|
|
drk posted:Yes, it is SIPC insured, but SIPC doesnt protect your money market from losing value, it protects you against failure of the brokerage firm. edit: more SIPC info here Yup, that's what I mean. If we're talking about stashing our emergency funds somewhere, sipc is the relevant protection if it's not in a savings account.
|
|
#
?
Nov 2, 2022 19:08
|
|
|
Money Market fund at 2.9X% isn't a better rate than all banks/hysas currently though. There's no-requirement HYSA and like, $100 minimum balance level requirement at 3% and some with higher minimums or other requirements above 3%. Money market yield may go up in the future, but banks might raise their apy too. https://www.google.com/search?q=best+hysa+rate E: also keep in mind if you want to swap accounts to chase %, if your savings in the account are $100k a .5% difference in rate is $500 annually, at $50k its $250, at $10k its $50, and at $1k its $5. surc fucked around with this message at 23:18 on Nov 2, 2022 |
|
#
?
Nov 2, 2022 22:57
|
|
|
Top interest HYSA accounts are often short lived offers though. I opened and closed a number of accounts over the past 20 years or so chasing rates. Worse, many places its hard to fully close accounts - I have a few dormant accounts that are one breach away from leaking my SSN or something. With a money market (or treasuries), you can hold them in a brokerage account you already have if you're in this thread. I agree about the small effect of yield chasing and I wouldnt recommend opening new accounts for 25 bp or something. But, transferring money to an account you already have is easy - I certainly would spend 5 minutes for $xx/year.
|
|
#
?
Nov 2, 2022 23:33
|
|
|
ranbo das posted:If you're at Fidelity SPRXX, their equivalent, is at 2.96 Haha good news, my indecision with recent market weirdness has netted me positive profits!
|
|
#
?
Nov 2, 2022 23:57
|
|
|
drk posted:Top interest HYSA accounts are often short lived offers though. I opened and closed a number of accounts over the past 20 years or so chasing rates. Worse, many places its hard to fully close accounts - I have a few dormant accounts that are one breach away from leaking my SSN or something. With a money market (or treasuries), you can hold them in a brokerage account you already have if you're in this thread.   https://www.depositaccounts.com/banks/capital-one-360.html#rates https://personal.vanguard.com/us/fu...F2019&year=#res  And it really sucks about your info being out there, not to be a dick about it but I don't think that's necessarily representative of the situation of most people and I'd suggest people could avoid it by not chasing % by opening and closing a bunch of accounts. Agreed that it's less effort to just swap into a money market account you already have than open a new account if that's your bag, but it's not really a huge improvement and it carries a different level of risk. E: whoops grabbed the wrong link for the first chart, fixed. surc fucked around with this message at 00:36 on Nov 3, 2022 |
|
#
?
Nov 3, 2022 00:32
|
|
|
My info isnt out there. My point was while you can "close" a specific numbered savings account with a bank, your data is with them indefinitely. 3% is good, until next week at least (since rates went up 0.75% today). I'm not some money market holy warrior, in the zero-interest rate era money market accounts often have had a lower return than the best savings accounts.
|
|
#
?
Nov 3, 2022 01:52
|
|
|
Maybe I'm just salty because of how this entire year has gone, but am I doing the wrong thing by auto-buying on the last day of the month? Am I getting front-run because a lot of buying happens at the end of the month, or does it not matter and it gets lost in the noise?
|
|
#
?
Nov 3, 2022 21:38
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 30, 2024 16:30 |
|
|
I suppose you could try to time the market instead. Or ask your 30-years-from-now self whether the answer to your question will keep him up at night. Just settle on a solid investment strategy and don't try to micromanage the non-details.
|
|
#
?
Nov 3, 2022 21:48
|
|
