Amerivest Portfolios

[COB_Speicher]

I have a current account with Ameritrade. One of the associates called me the other day asking if I would be interested in moving my Roth IRA account currently held at USAA bank to one of their Amerivest Portfolios. They are diversified accounts that are reallocated monthly by Ameritrade and the account fee is .9% for the fund that I picked out. I then saw Suze Orman a couple weeks ago saying if anyone cold calls you and trys to sell you an account to hang up on them. This was not exactly a cold call since I do have an account with them. Anyone have any experience with these accounts or any thoughts would be appreciated.

Thanks

[disneysteve]

How is your Roth currently invested and what are your expenses there? How does that compare to what Ameritrade is selling?

0.9% expense ratio is quite high when you compare it to an industry leader like Vanguard, where my wife and I have our Roth accounts. Vanguard's ERs start as low as 0.05% for their S&P 500 Index fund so 0.9% is 18 times higher. Doesn't sound like a good deal to me.

I'd take a good hard look at your USAA account and see if it is worth staying there. If it isn't, Ameritrade probably isn't the place to go either.

[andrewkr80]

+1 to what Steve said.

Vanguard's target retirement accounts will give you a diversified index portfolio that maintains your allocation for about 1/5 the price of amerivest. The choice is yours, but lower fees are a huge plus with years of compounding on your side.

[COB_Speicher]

Thanks for the replies, that's good advice that I shall heed.