[Bill]

If this were a taxable brokerage account, yes, that would be a concern.

You wouldn’t be “locked in for life”, but changing brokerages might require selling the asset and paying capital gains tax.

That’s going going to happen eventually anyway, but you want to be able to time that to oh the least amount of tax.

In a Roth, it doesn’t matter at all.

You can buy and sell whenever you want with not taxes.

As long as he rolled the money to another Roth at the new company, there would be no issues.

[Ron]

FYI: A Roth acct can only be opened for people with EARNED income.

[Joe]

Portability in a Roth is not really an issue as you can just sell if you need to. Go with FZROX.

Why pay fee (even a small one) if you do not have to?

Its performance is already starting to pull away from VTSAX.

We have our minor child’s Roth in FZROX as well as our own with some FZLIX too

[Kristen]

I would pick one or the other, personally. My kids have custodial Roth IRAs and buy FZROX.

My Roth as well.

I don’t see us leaving Fidelity, so it wasn’t a concern to me (and if we did, it’s not the end of the world).

[Megan]

Not exactly. If he chose to roll funds elsewhere FZROX would have be sold.

That does not, however, make it a taxable event.

A sale within a tax advantaged account is still not subject to taxes.

That said in this day and age, I would lean towards ETFs because they are, as you identified, more portable.

[Mark]

Pointless to invest in fskax and fzrox. Theyre 99% the same.

If ur never leaving fidelity do fzrox.

60% of my portfolio is here.

The likelihood of wanting or needing to leave fidelity is low.

They’re the best and not too many ppl would disagree.

If u want to be completely portable pick vti.

Long term returns on all of them will be Nearly identical

[Luke]

If this were for me:

50% VTI Total US Market

50% AVUV US Small Cap Value
Small Cap Value stocks have the highest expected return.

However, (obviously) outperforming the market is not a guarantee.

Those ETFs are also transferable between any broker.

So if they decide to move their money later on then there shouldn’t be an issue.

[Christopher]

FSKAX and FZROX are essentially the same, so pick one or the other, but both is a waste of effort.

You can sell them for cash and transfer anywhere, there’s no lifetime commitment for them.

In an ira, you can even sell without tax consequences, so I wouldn’t worry about the picks.

ETFs like VTI, ITOT, SCHB, etc are easier to transfer.

In reality, transferring between brokerages is generally uncommon, so optimizing for it isn’t super important.

You are unlikely to find lower fees than FZROX, and FSKAX is among the lowest too; optimizing for fees when you’re already using among the cheapest is also a waste of effort.

I’d stop worrying about ~0.03% or less fees, and focus more on saving more or enjoying life.

[Kushal]

I lean towards “portable” ETFs to be able to have flexibility to move ETFs between brokerage, especially in a taxable account

[Jenny]

You can always rollover a Roth.

I took mine from Lincoln Financial to Vanguard a few years ago.

Had to trade out funds but the balance remained.

[Patrick]

Use ETFs, not mutual funds. Overall, ETFs are a better choice anyway but especially for portability.

[Author]

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