The Frugal Student now has money at Vanguard. My 401k rolled my money (about $4200) into a IRA without my consent or knowledge so I responded by contacting Vanguard and initiated a rollover. It took over a month and a three way call with Vanguard and my old 401k provider to finally get them to give my money up. I am very happy to be at Vanguard, though and will be started back up with my millionaire updates starting this month.
I chose Vanguard because of their low fees (.18% for my current account), but had avoided them until now because of their high minimums ($3000/account) and because Fidelity has a credit card which deposits 2% of my spending into an IRA. Right now those credit card rewards are going into my husband's Roth IRA, and is the only retirement savings we have. Once we are saving again, my husband Roth IRA will be moved to Vanguard as well, and I will open a Roth IRA at Fidelity to take continue to take advantage of the rewards, for as long as they last.
However, none of the money in my new Vanguard IRA will get added to which may in the future limit me on my IRA contributions and I may later decide to move that money to Fidelity. The money in my 401k, and now in the Vanguard IRA was money set aside prior to my marriage, and therefore is all mine. Well, as long as I do not add one red cent during my marriage. Therefore I plan to keep that money separate from any marital assets. Some people may say I am planning for my marriage to fail, but to that I say, I get life insurance and disability not because I expect to get disabled or to die in the ten years, but to cover me, in case it does. I came into the marriage with assets, my husband with debt, why should I not protect myself. I could have done a pre-nup, but since most of my assets were in retirement accounts, why not just use the little legal trick and not add to those accounts? A pre-nup can be set aside by a judge, keeping assets apart can't later be joined by the judge.
For those who are frugal students, don't lose the benefits of your frugality when you get married. Protect yourself, and if your future spouse loves you, he or she will want to protect you too. I know my husband was willing to sign a pre-nup before we got married, he even brought it up. He benefited from my frugalness, but he did not want to take advantage of it. And, to me, that distinction is important.
