Personal Finance and Investing

Several institutions have upgraded. I consider some retrograde. Once is unrecognizable to me. One doesn't work very well. I had to email one of them. They put out videos. Who has 10 hours to digest this stuff? What worked no longer works. ETrade got bought by Morgan Stanley a year ago. They called it a merger. It was Etrade from Morgan Stanley. Now in Sept it will be Morgan Stanley Smith Barney. I don't have an account. I have a lineage. It has provenance, going back 30 years. From one to another buyout, a merger, another buyout. I closed eTrade once, only to have another account bought by eTrade! Then there was Harris Bank. It sold off a division too. At one point 2 accounts merged. These are pretty small accounts, But what a headache!

And fees. New fees coming. How will they paralyze me now? I've thought of going with a local Schwab office. THere are few so I'm lucky one is local. Bring it all under one roof. Then learn new software! For weeks or months!

So I know what you mean!

Vanguard is bringing everything under VBS, Vanguard Brokerage Services. How do they plan to go from mutual funds to Broker? New fees surely.