Where to move $ after Vanguard?

[Anonymous]

I am self employed and had some of my small business retirement $$ set up w Vanguard who sold to Ascensus. I know nothing about this company or whether to keep my $ there or not.

Anyone have experience with or know the reputation of Ascensus? Or have suggestions? I’ve reached out to my tax acct too.

TIA

[Anonymous]

My 401K is at Ascensus and I work for a small business. Do you have a middleman taking part of the profits? We have Morgan Stanley that overseas our 401K and they take their cut, and then there are the Ascensus fees. It's frustrating when you have over $1 million in that 401K to pay ~$400/month in admin fees. But I'm fine with the Ascensus options for investments - I've got all mine in Fidelity index funds (which do take their own fees - but pretty low).

If you move it to a Traditional IRA, you will lose the ease of donating future money to a Back Door Roth IRA.

[Anonymous]

If you're self employed, move the whole plan to fidelity

[Anonymous]

There’s a lot of discussion about this on bogleheads. You could search the forums there and see if there’s any info that’s useful to you.

[Anonymous]

I never understood this move by Vanguard. Seems so weird to get rid of all your small biz owner customers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I never understood this move by Vanguard. Seems so weird to get rid of all your small biz owner customers.

They were probably losing money servicing the plans.

[Anonymous]

I’m also self-employed and had my 401k moved to Ascensus. I plan to move to Fidelity.

I may also close the 401k (if I can do so without causing a tax event) and roll over into an IRA at Vanguard.

On Bogleheads or here, I read that Ascensus will start charging fees next year and will also charge a fee to close the account.

From the forum posts I read, it sounded like Fidelity was correctly coding the rollovers whereas Ascensus was coding them “distributions.” One person said they took the check (a check!!) that Ascensus MAILED them and personally took it to a Fidelity office to be sure the IRS would see this was going from 401k to 401k and not being “distributed.”

NP

[Anonymous]

You can also see this thread:

https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/15/1225058.page#28261446

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you're self employed, move the whole plan to fidelity

Why fidelity?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m also self-employed and had my 401k moved to Ascensus. I plan to move to Fidelity.

I may also close the 401k (if I can do so without causing a tax event) and roll over into an IRA at Vanguard.

On Bogleheads or here, I read that Ascensus will start charging fees next year and will also charge a fee to close the account.

From the forum posts I read, it sounded like Fidelity was correctly coding the rollovers whereas Ascensus was coding them “distributions.” One person said they took the check (a check!!) that Ascensus MAILED them and personally took it to a Fidelity office to be sure the IRS would see this was going from 401k to 401k and not being “distributed.”

NP

Thanks. I’m OP and have no interest in paying anyone to have my money invested there. What you share here is scary.

I need to put $20K somewhere safe by 10/15 and have less than $100K that was in vanguard that I need to move or approve or something. The majority of my funds are elsewhere.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You can also see this thread:

https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/15/1225058.page#28261446

Thank you so much for this link.
I will also checkout bogleheads which I had never heard of til now.

[Anonymous]

I was a vanguard solo 402k that moved to ascensus. I have spent 6 weeks and over 20 hours on phone calls and in research trying to get my money from ascensus to fidelity. It has been an evolving nightmare and according to fidelity (and vanguard…because I had to call them once too) this is happening to everyone. It sounds like fidelity (and maybe other firms) finally got ascensus to play by basic rules, like using a transfer form but it is still a crapshoot if the check comes to you or the new place. Anyway, if you are just starting it hopefully won’t be as traumatizing, but I definitely lost it after so many frustrating, crazy calls with ascensus. At one point I seriously questioned if I needed to hire a lawyer. More than anything it exposed how shoddy their operations are and frankly it came across as deceitful in some ways. I am glad to (hopefully) get my money out soon. Fingers crossed.

Anyway, if you call fidelity to switch, they are well aware of the issue and super kind in trying to help. I hope the NYT does an article on this because it has been rather spectacular.

[Anonymous]

Fidelity

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I was a vanguard solo 402k that moved to ascensus. I have spent 6 weeks and over 20 hours on phone calls and in research trying to get my money from ascensus to fidelity. It has been an evolving nightmare and according to fidelity (and vanguard…because I had to call them once too) this is happening to everyone. It sounds like fidelity (and maybe other firms) finally got ascensus to play by basic rules, like using a transfer form but it is still a crapshoot if the check comes to you or the new place. Anyway, if you are just starting it hopefully won’t be as traumatizing, but I definitely lost it after so many frustrating, crazy calls with ascensus. At one point I seriously questioned if I needed to hire a lawyer. More than anything it exposed how shoddy their operations are and frankly it came across as deceitful in some ways. I am glad to (hopefully) get my money out soon. Fingers crossed.

Anyway, if you call fidelity to switch, they are well aware of the issue and super kind in trying to help. I hope the NYT does an article on this because it has been rather spectacular.

I spoke to Ascensus about this the other day, and they said that I need to terminate myself as an "employee" (which is a fiction, because I am a solo, but whatever), and then initiate a rollover. I will receive a check made out to Fidelity, which I then have to mail to Fidelity within 60 days. It will be deposited in to a rollover IRA, and I will then move it to a new solo 401k that I set up with Fidelity. It seems to make sense to me, but I will call Fidelity to confirm before I start the process.

[Anonymous]

Yes. I M the poster above. That was the process and then fidelity told me to not go forward with the process (breaking news!) and do a different process. Believe me it was inconsistent stories right and left about what the right process was, but I was much more comfortable doing the new process where the fund request comes from fidelity and not through a termination action on my part. That termination method may in fact be legal but EVERYONE including my accountant, my lawyer friends, and fidelity reps thought it was a sketchy approach.