Vanguard changes their fee schedule

Vanguard has eliminated several account related fees and replaced them with a single account service fee, effective April 26, 2007.

Here’s a summary of the changes:

The following annual $10 account-related fees have been eliminated:

• The custodial fee on traditional IRAs, Roth IRAs, and SEP–IRAs with a balance of less than $5,000.
• The maintenance fee on index fund accounts with a balance of less than $10,000.
• The custodial fee on education savings accounts (ESAs) with a balance of less than $5,000.
• The low-balance fee on all nonretirement accounts with a balance of less than $2,500.

These fees have been replaced with a single account service fee. This $20 fee will be charged annually for each Vanguard® fund in which you have a balance under $10,000 in an account.

The annual account service fee can be avoided by:

1. Signing up for account access on Vanguard.com® and choosing electronic delivery of shareholder materials, including statements, confirmations, fund reports, and prospectuses.
2. Consolidating your accounts or investing additional assets to bring all account balances in all funds to $10,000 or more.
3. Maintaining total Vanguard mutual fund assets of $100,000 or more.

To learn more about Vanguard’s new fee policy, please click here.

Tags: investment fees

Best Deals on Student Loans

I’ve gotten a lot of questions about the FAFSA form lately, as well as the best student loans to get.

Kiplinger.com has a great article on student loans right now.  Some tips shared include:

1. Determine which type of school your family can afford
2. Set a realistic limit on how much debt you can afford
3. Stick with the Federal loan programs - Perkins, Stafford and PLUS loans
4. After you’ve exhausted your options in Federal loans, get a list of lenders from the school, or from FinAid (www.finaid.com)

This is part of a series of articles on paying for college.  Click here to see the full text of this article, Best Deals on College Student Loans.  Click here for last weeks article, Smart Ways to Pay for College. Next weeks article will focus on the best loans for parents.

Tags: saving for college, student loans, college loans

Small Ways to Save Big

Kiplinger.com has a great article on 20 Small Ways to Save Big by Jessica Anderson. 

Tags: saving money, saving crisis