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cubicle gangster
Jun 26, 2005

magda, make the tea
I didn't see a thread about international finance so I hope this is ok.

I've been living in the US for 3 years at this point - I have an L1 visa. I have a bit over 30k in a savings account with chase, which has been entirely earned and saved while living in the US. I just got back from a meeting with chase where I was trying to open up a mutual fund/investment account and the application was blocked. My advisor just spent an hour trying to figure out why and eventually got word back from their new york office that as a non-US citizen i'm not allowed to do that. It's apparently only recent and any existing non-us citizens with investment accounts still have them, but there are no new ones allowed. This was the first he'd heard of it and had no idea why, couldn't answer a single one of my questions.

Does anyone know why, how come it's a recent thing, and what am I supposed to do with my money now? Am I just not allowed to invest it at all here? It's kind of put a massive spanner into my plans.

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cubicle gangster
Jun 26, 2005

magda, make the tea
I just found this - http://online.wsj.com/articles/fidelity-bans-overseas-investors-from-buying-mutual-funds-1404246385

But I don't live abroad, and all my money has been earned in the US.

cubicle gangster
Jun 26, 2005

magda, make the tea
The way it was worded from chase bothered me a little, I didn't realize it was a bank policy.
How come chase is a terrible bank (outside of this example)?

I just did some searching and I think i'm now leaning towards transferring $30k to etrade to split between 3 funds, exactly 10k a piece, is there anything I should know before I do this? hidden fees etc?
It seems like I pay $10 per transfer (e: $20 for mutual funds)- so this would cost me $30(60)? and another $30(60) every time I add to them? I'm saving 2.5k every couple of months at the moment and wanted to keep topping these up so i'd probably do another transfer every quarter.

Elephanthead - What benefits would charles schwab give me over this, bearing in mind I will never go to their office and don't plan to talk to anyone on the phone? They appear to charge $75 to buy into a mutual fund rather than etrades $20

e: my friend who works in finance in the uk is telling me that I should find a broker which waives the initial investment charge - which chase were telling me was 5% for my particular funds and that's just what you pay to get in there. Is it possible to not do that in the US? I cant see any brokers claiming to waive that or not and i'd imagine it would be a big selling point.
He also said to watch out for an annual management charge which could be up to 1.5% of my total, which I also don't see any mention of on etrades.

e: for all the information, funds I was looking at were FKINX, FISEX for the safe choices and FBDIX for some potential high growth/risk.

cubicle gangster fucked around with this message at 22:26 on Sep 15, 2014

cubicle gangster
Jun 26, 2005

magda, make the tea

slap me silly posted:

Slow down and do some more research before you jump in. Etrade is relatively expensive. The three funds you mentioned have large front loads and none are "safe". How did you decide your portfolio allocation and why do those match it? Schwab has much better fund options than the Franklin ones, and where are you getting that $75 number from?

This is my research, i've not started yet. I have now realized that those funds are total poo poo and it's a good thing that chase wouldn't let me open this. the guy at chase dropped these recommendations and sold them to me... I was planning to run everything by a friend before actually using the account so i'd like to think i'd have caught that at least. Kind of a dick move though, he made out like 5% to buy in was just standard for mutual funds, some were lower like 4.5 but it was around there. I even asked if there were any with no fee and he was just like 'they've all got some fees, these are your best choices'

The schwab website here - http://www.schwab.com/public/schwab/investing/pricing_services/fees_minimums
says $75 per buy on transaction free funds, which is what I have learnt I should be looking at now. That makes me think they charge me $75 for each deposit/buy in i make, so if i've got 3 transaction fee funds i drop money into every quarter that's 225 a time. Is this not correct?

So far i've done some reading up on expense ratios, charges and using the sectors to decide how to spread it.
After that I spent the last hour searching and reading about funds, and are funds like LEXCX, TRBCX, TSWIX more in line? They appear to be from what i've picked up so far.

cubicle gangster fucked around with this message at 23:28 on Sep 15, 2014

cubicle gangster
Jun 26, 2005

magda, make the tea
Is it not the same thing where it says on here 'no transaction fee fund' ?
https://www.etrade.wallst.com/v1/stocks/snapshot/snapshot.asp?symbol=lexcx&rsO=new

When you browse funds it's like the first category it makes you pick between and I read I shouldn't be looking at ones with fees now.

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cubicle gangster
Jun 26, 2005

magda, make the tea
Didn't even see those, I was searching no fee through etrade.

I'm tempted to go with vanguard over schwab just because the website is so much nicer laid out and finding information is easier...
I'll do a lot more research before going in, but are vanguards VEIPX, VQNPX, VEXAX reasonable?

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