I am Now A Vanguard Flagship Client

What a pleasant suprise -- I logged into my Vanguard account the other day and noticed I was now upgraded to a Vanguard Flagship client.

Vanguard Flagship service is for Vanguard clients with over $1 million in Vanguard accounts. I ofcourse don't even have $1 million let alone that much in Vanguard accounts. However, my entire immediate family has all of our Vanguard accounts registered to my parents address and apparently now the total value of these accounts has exceeded $1 million. Therefore all of us have now become Vanguard Flagship clients.

I expect that I will reap some benefits from this service:
1) I get 12 free brokerage trades a year and any additional are $8. Since I trade so infrequently, I think I could use this as my new primary brokerage account and not pay any trading commisions.
2) Flagship members get Turbotax for free. I might not take advantage of this for the current tax year as my employer will likely be paying for someone to do my taxes with my current assignment.
3) Less attractive, but still worthy of consideration is their free investment review. At some point I could take advantage of this just to get a different perstective on my investment strategy.


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Comments (13)


I'm assuming that you also get access to admiral shares?

Sounds like it's not very eventful. You could get better brokerage commissions from Zecco (with some small limitations) and it doesn't look like you'll take advantage of the other two. At least it's probably good for customer support to say you are a Flagship member. I bet that gets some attention.

Lazy,
Actually I see the free stock trades as my main benefit. I am not willing to use Zecco for now because I am not convinced their business model will hold. However, I have plenty of confidence in Vanguard.

So if I take full advantage of the free trades I value that at $4/trade (via my Sharebuilder account) * 12 trades = $48 (plus market/limit orders which are more expensive at Sharebuilder).

I am not aware of any admiral shares benefit for just being Flagship, however all account fees are waived at the voyager level, so even though I only have $600 in 1 account there are no fees on it.

Maybe you should take advantage of the free review in conjunction w/ combining your finances w/ your fiancee. It will give her a chance to get involved with a (somewhat neutral) third party, at least in terms of your asset allocation if not the actual products recommended.

2M,
Does each individual account get 12 free trades? or just 12 for the whole family?
Beware the "free" review. It is just an excuse to get you to transfer assets from another fund family to V. Moreover it is focused on V index funds. I know individuals who were told to transfer assets from great, closed V funds (e.g. health care and cap opportunity) to "balance" the portfolio. Now they can't get back.
VBS (V brokerage service) is really Pershing LLC behind the scenes. Any time you have a problem, V and Pershing will point the finger at each other. I've had many 1099 problems with VBS holding foreign non-V mutual funds.

Dear 2Million:

I must say that I find your quest to amass a considerable amount both interesting, and, given your singleminded approach, certainly attainable. I just stumbled across this blog, and having read a number of the entries, my reaction is a combination of admiration and appalled amusement. My prayers go with your fiance.

FYI, you consistently mispell the contraction of "you are" as your, instead of you're, which contrasts with your otherwise engaging style.

Very interesting blog: I plan to read more of your past entries, and look forward to learning how things work out for you in the future.

Forgot to comment on Turbotax.
Free version is not the local copy but the Web-only version. I'm not comfortable putting my private tax info on the Web and counting on Intuit and/or V to safeguard it. Moreover, I don't want to require a good Web connection (both from my side and from theirs) in order to be able to work on my taxes. Tax software purchased on sale or with rebate is a great value. I prefer TaxCut because it is cheaper and does a nicer job with foreign income plus it doesn't have the license/activation issues (not sure if they still exist).

Yeah I never said I was a great writer -- hopefully Im improving over time.

I didn't realize it was the web only version of Turbotax. I have a couple coworkers that have used the web version and liked it. I will still likely give it a try.

Gotta love the grammatical corrections! Tough audience...lol

Good call. Vanguard is one of the few companies that actually has high quality, inexpensive index funds. Thank goodness for John Boogle.

Best,

James

I would think they would offer a little bit more of an incentive when you reach over $1 million dollars. Turbotax costs what? $50 tops? haha

And as for the trades, the other comment is correct. There are so many other brokerages that offer great rates to anyone. I'm with firstrade and I get trades for as low as $4!

I second the prayers for your fiancee.

Wow, sounds cool! I know they will also contact you more often since they see you as high networth clients.

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A personal finance weblog of my journey to reach my goal of $2 million + the value of my primary residence.
Current Net Worth: $1,938,393

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