Does anyone use this service at Merrill Edge? A couple weeks ago I moved my Roth IRA from Merrill Lynch to Merrill Edge. My plan was to take a more active, yet laid back approach to my IRA. I bought 5 Vanguard Mutual Funds:
- VISVX - Small-Cap Value Index Fund
- VIVAX - Value Index Fund Investor Shares
- VGTSX - Total International Stock Index Fund
- VGSIX - REIT Index Fund Investor Shares
- VBMFX - Total Bond Market Index Fund
I met the required $3,000 initial purchase requirement, and through my research saw the subsequent minimum was $1.
So my plan was to enroll in the Automatic Investment Plan (AIP) and contribute $458.33 on a monthly basis. In the AIP you can allocate the contribution by a percentage amount. So for example, I'd have 7% of the $458 go into the the Total Bond Fund, VBMFX, etc.
As it turns out, the actual Merrill Edge AIP requires all subsequent minimums to be $100 PER FUND. See here: (http://ift.tt/2sKFdnw) In order for me to hit that $100 subsequent minimum, I'd have to set up the AIP to contribute every 4 months.
I was looking at some older information and saw that back around 2011, many Vanguard mutual funds had a subsequent minimum of $100, but it was changed to a $1. I thought that Merrill Edge may have made a mistake in regards to those specific Vanguard funds. I called up their service desk and the guy confirmed that it's the Merrill Edge AIP that requires the $100 min.
Has anyone else experienced this? I don't understand how this $100 requirement would be feasible for IRA accounts when I'm capped at a contribution limit of $5.5k/year. This $100 minimum was no where to be found online, so I spent almost $100 in Transaction Fees to buy them, and now I can't do monthly contributions.
I understand that I could buy the ETF's instead. But as I mentioned before, I wanted to take a laid back approach and have the contributions go in automatically. Also, the reason why I set up the account with Merrill Edge and not Vanguard is because I hit the Platinum Level of their Preferred Rewards program, so I get 30 free equity and ETF trades a month.
In the end, I suppose I can sell the mutual funds (and get charged close to another $100 in fees..$200 total), and start buying the ETF's monthly, but I wanted to avoid that in the first place.
Submitted June 09, 2017 at 09:38AM by JohnJDK http://ift.tt/2sbl6lI
