Time to Consolidate Investments

I recently realized that I really would like most of our money at Vanguard. You really can't beat their low fees for investing. Right now, we have money in four different places, between college funds and retirement. I would like to get it down to two. Vanguard and my husband's TSP.

The first one I will be dealing with is Fidelity. We only have Fidelity because that is where my husband's previous 401k was and we simply rolled it into an IRA and even moved most of it to a Roth IRA. Currently, Fidelity holds 15% of our total portfolio. And sadly, about 31% of that amount is in cash (which is 5% of our entire retirement portfolio).

My first step is to determine where at Vanguard I want to move the money. Since this is a small portion and we do not have any international investments, I think I will suggest to my husband we put it into the International Stock Index. Most of that will be in a Roth IRA, but about $5K is in a traditional IRA. The nice thing about moving retirement money around, is there is no tax implications...unless we convert the money from the IRA to the Roth. I don't think that is currently in the cards.

I will end up doing most of the work for this change, hopefully online. I will likely need a signature from my husband. And if he can agree to the change tonight or tomorrow than I can get any paperwork done this week, otherwise, I will need to wait until his annual training is over.

We have about $10K at American Funds. This is a loaded fund, which means you pay the broker/dealer every time you make a purchase into the fund...usually 5.75% of your purchase. The fund has to be doing pretty well to offset those kinds of fees! Luckily, we did not pay the fee on these, since at the time my father in law was the broker and he was able to invest us at NAV (Net Asset Value). We have a UTMA account for each of the girls and a Roth for my husband there. We haven't been adding to these accounts, so I think it is time to get them moved, too. I will work on these once Fidelity is completed. I need to think about any tax implications on the UTMA, each of them has less than $1500 there.

A new goal to work on, I'm excited!! Oh, and right now I'm thinking half of our down payment in a CD paying 1.2% for 15 months, and the other half in Vanguard Dividend Growth Fund (VDIGX). If we put less in the fund, we have less exposure to market risk, but still an opportunity to benefit from the market. If we lose money, it could change our plans for housing, but it isn't a huge deal at this point for us. We will be accumulating more cash in the mean time too!

Do you have your investments in one place? If not, how many different companies do you do your investing with?