Vanguard IRA - Fund Minimums?

[southerndoc]

I'm planning on opening a SEP-IRA at Vanguard in January to start indexing with their index mutual funds. I like Schwab, my current custodian for my SEP, but I want to do more index investing, and Vanguard offers the lowest fees. (I plan to maintain my Schwab account for stock purchases.)

Does anyone know if Vanguard waives the minimums for various funds when opening an account? I plan to automatically invest my contributions into 10 funds. I would prefer to dollar cost average monthly instead of waiting til the third quarter to contribute $30,000 for the minimum for all funds.

[disneysteve]

Vanguard's minimum is $3,000 per fund on all but 1 or 2 of there offerings. You wouldn't need to put in $30,000 all at once. As long as you have at least $3,000 to start, open your account with one fund. As you accumulate more money, you can add additional funds. If you'd like, you can start with a money market fund and then just deploy the money into other funds as you have enough for the minimum.

I'm curious about the 10-fund plan. Why so many?

[kv968]

Have you looked into Schwab's offering of free ETF trading to their customers? Granted they don't have all the areas covered, but the basics are there.

[southerndoc]

I'm curious about the 10-fund plan. Why so many?

Diversification. US total stocks, US small cap, emerging markets, European, Pacific basin, high-yield corporate bonds, investment-grade bonds, TIPS, REIT, and precious metals.

[disneysteve]

Ok then. Since you say you'd have $30,000 by the 3rd quarter, it will just take you until then to be fully diversified. First quarter you can fund 3 funds, second quarter another 3 and third quarter the rest, or something like that.