thanks. I'm leaning toward opening two accounts as you've suggested.
What i like about Vangaurd is the low cost of their lifecycle funds.
Maybe this is a topic for another thread, but anybody have any opinions
on lifecycle funds like Vanguards Target retirement 20XX?

<moviebrandmovies[at]gmail.com> wrote
- quote -

You can open an IRA account with Vanguard to hold your mutual funds, and
another IRA account with a discount broker like Ameritrade (or shop around
for others) for your stock trades. You split your total allowed IRA
contribution for the year between the two as you see fit.

I personally do similar to what Beliavsky described: Use Fidelity for much
of my mutual funds (index) but also use it for online stock brokering. Their
customer service is very good, IMO. But I used to do more like what I
describe above, as it was a bit more cost effective.

moviebrandmovies[at]gmail.com wrote:
- quote -

You should also consider Fidelity. They have cut fees on their index
funds to about the same level as Vanguard, and they usually do well
(better than Vanguard) in rankings of discount brokers. You can find my
message "Fidelity reduces index fund expense ratios to 0.10%" in this
newsgroup from Sep 2004 using Google.

I'm looking to finally open my IRA. I was planning on going with
Vanguard. Low cost index funds - which is exactly what I'm looking for.
I would also like to buy some large cap stocks, but Vanguard's
comissions are too expensive. So what I'm idealy looking for the most
efficient way to own both low cost index funds (preferably Vanguard)
and a few large cap stocks. I have a long time horizon (I'm 26) and
would like to add to the funds on a monthly basis. Any suggestions on
the best way to approach this? Thanks!