Hi, all, newbie here. I have 401k investments with Vanguard through my work. I contribute 5%, and my employer matches it. Recently, I've been wondering if I should use the Vanguard Managed Account Program. It's a fee-based service, and I'm wondering if it's worth the money. Any advice? Thanks!

How much is the fee and what are you expecting them to do for you that you can't do for yourself? I don't see the services offered in the plan that do very much for you. Those services are:

• Automatically enrolling employees in your defined contribution plan.
• Increasing their plan contributions annually by a percentage you set.
• Allocating their assets appropriately over time, without having to take action.

I don't see those service as worth much, if anything.

You've already done this. Value $0


This requires, at most, a form completed once per year. Assuming you are slow and it takes you 12 minutes, that 0.2 hr/year. If you make $50 per hour that's $10.



Assuming you invest in Vanguard target date funds, again, this is already done for you so it has $0 value. If you invest in index or other funds instead then perhaps it costs another 3 minutes of your time every year to look up the allocation of the relevant target date fund to see what allocation Vanguard would set for you. So worst case, 3 minutes per year or 0.05 hr valued at $2.50 per year.

So the value of this program might be $12.50 per year.

If the fees are less than that it could be worthwhile.

Alternatively, it seems to be free if your account value is over $50,000. You should probably wait until you have at least that much. If you have less than that you are probably young and should stick with a 100% total stock market allocation.

Having being offered many of their services, sometimes even for free, I talk with the person on the other end and say "no thanks."