[KayakerNC]

Originally Posted by l2ridehd

Vanguard works exactly like any other brokerage account. And if you do buy an ETF commission free, you are still paying the underlying ETF management fee. And Vanguard, Fidelity and Schwab have the lowest fee's for the trade or the management fee of the ETF. The lowest cost way to invest in any MF or ETF is through Vanguard. I manage my entire portfolio using Vanguard, Fidelity and Schwab and my total expense for all investments is .011%. That is $11 each year for every $10,000 invested. I challenge you to beat that anywhere. Go to Morningstar and use their Xray tool to plug all your investments into and then check your total expenses. Also add any management and transaction costs you encounter.

And to get money from Vanguard all you need to do is set up the wire transfer feature to your bank and you can get any amount you have by selling the fund and placing in their MM account and then do the transfer. Usually about 24 hours. Schwab works almost the same way using their investor checking account, Fidelity usually takes a bit longer, but within 48 hours. The only issue I have getting funds settled is selling options in the Schwab brokerage account. They seem to take forever to settle the funds correctly.

In my experience, moving money from Vanguard to my B&M bank account was faster then moving money form my online bank (Discover).