Vanguard IRA Benefit For Joint Account Holders

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For those that have an Roth, Traditional, or SEP IRA at Vanguard like me, you probably noticed that they charge a custodial fee of $10 a year for each mutual fund you have with a balance of less than $5,000. This can add up if you own multiple funds in different IRAs. The only way to get around this is if “the IRA owner?s Vanguard account assets (including IRAs, employer-sponsored plans, brokerage accounts, annuities, and nonretirement accounts) total $50,000 or more.”

I just discovered that for joint accounts, the total value goes towards both account holders. For example, if my wife and I hold a joint taxable account with $50,000 in it, we would both be exempt from IRA custodial fees no matter what our IRA balances were, even though the $50k is shared between us. Might be helpful for those near the threshold.

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Comments

  1. nice discovery!

  2. Loi Tran says

    Since index funds minimums are 10k, a person with 50k in assets will not incur any custodial fees for any funds?

  3. No, unfortunately any other fees like index fund maintenance (low-balance) fees still apply. This is just for IRA custodial fees. Those are seperately calculated.

  4. Great discovery Jonathan. This makes setting up joint accounts worth while. I’ve always spent the extra couple of minutes logging in and out if I wanted to access my wife’s account.

  5. Thomas Winslow says

    I’ve added my mom and daughter in addition to my wife. Works fine. Plus this put us over $100,000 and into Voyager territory, which exempts those index and retirement account fees as well.

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