Vanguard IRA Benefit For Joint Account Holders

March 2, 2006 By Jonathan Ping 5 Comments
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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.

Filed Under: Retirement
Last updated: October 10, 2011
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Comments

  1. Kevin says
    March 3, 2006 at 5:19 am

    nice discovery!

    Reply
  2. Loi Tran says
    March 3, 2006 at 9:21 am

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

    Reply
  3. Jonathan says
    March 3, 2006 at 9:24 am

    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.

    Reply
  4. Aaron says
    March 3, 2006 at 11:02 am

    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.

    Reply
  5. Thomas Winslow says
    March 5, 2006 at 9:16 pm

    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.

    Reply

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