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Comment by saryant | Hacker News Reader

Plain old mutual funds. You can buy Vanguard funds fee-free from Vanguard in whatever dollar amount you like. Been that way for decades.

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This, exactly. The only "flaw" of Vanguard's admiral funds is the $3000 minimum. For many of my friends, that is a bit of a high hill to climb to get started. Then again, those same friends seem to think nothing about speculating on whatever the hipster cryptocurrency is, so perhaps they have a different set of issues they need to address.

The target date funds have a $1000 minimum and are quite reasonable options for retirement or general diversified investments. The expense ratio is slightly higher, but if you have less than $3000, the difference is miniscule.

Or you can buy ETF versions of Vanguard funds. Same expenses as mutual fund versions, but the minimum purchase is 1 share. Free to trade from a Vanguard account (or something like this Schwab account, since its exchange traded).

Yep, the advent of ETFs has made it a lot easier to get started. I hadn't thought about the target date funds, that is a good thought.

Your friends can start off buying Investor Shares in the fund(s) they like. Once they hit the Admiral Shares minimum, they can convert over to them[0].

Many of their funds also have corresponding ETFs, and I've found that most (all) have similar or lower expense ratios, and the minimum buy is a single share (of course, you can't buy fractional shares like you can with mutual funds, so that can be annoying).

[0] https://investor.vanguard.com/mutual-funds/convert-to-admira...

Vanguard has gotten rid of a lot of their investor-share classes of mutual funds. VTSAX used to have a $10k minimum. Now it has a $3k minimum, which used to be the amount to get the equivalent investor shares fund.

https://pressroom.vanguard.com/news/Press-Release-Vanguard-L...

$3000 is definitely a hill, but wouldn't they need to at least climb that hill to put away a safety buffer /before/ putting any post-tax money into equities??

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