Parchayi.com – Personal Finance Simplified

I just got this notice from Vanguard in my latest statement:

NEW FEE FOR ALL UVA RETIREMENT PLANS

Beginning in the first quarter of 2011, participants in all University of Virginia retirement plans will be charged an administrative fee of $12 per year. The fee will be deducted from each account on a quarterly basis. The first quarterly deduction of $3.00 will be withheld from your account balance and reflected in your first quarter statement. Please note that if you participate in more than one University of Virginia retirement plan, an annual fee will be charged for each plan.

The administrative fee covers the costs associated with record keeping, account statements, participant education, postage, and other services for the retirement plan and its participants. The administrative fee will be deducted from each of the funds in your account on a pro rata basis. For example, if a fund makes up 50% of your account balance, 50% of the fee will be deducted from that fund.

Also Vanguard who claims to have very low expense ratios also has more low balance fees than Fidelity and T Rowe Price (more details to follow in an update tomorrow). I have both a Roth IRA and all my UVA Retirement plans with Vanguard. I’m thinking of moving my UVA retirement to Fidelity and the Roth to T Rowe Price if Vanguard doesn’t do away with this new fee. Our options at UVA are Vanguard, Fidelity and TIAA CREF and Vanguard is the only one charging these new fees. Also my retirement plan is setup as three accounts and I’m sure that I’ll be charged $12 three times.

The only thing that AT&T iPhones can do over Verizon’s is simultaneous talk and data. Otherwise Verizon has the better offer. Unlimited data, like I currently enjoy on my Droid X, 3G Mobile hotspot available (probably the same deal as the Droids) and Facetime over 3G.

But with LTE devices around the corner, will the iPhone do as well as analysts expect? My guess is it will. I know a lot of people who suffered with AT&T when the original iPhone launched and have been suffering for years as they upgraded their iPhones with bad service. But they wouldn’t give up their iPhones.

Disclaimer: Own AAPL and VZ

I’ve been following all the product announcements at CES and amongst the major players, the most interesting devices are both from Motorola - the Motorola Xoom tablet and The Motorola Atrix phone. Both these are one step ahead of everything else out there.

How or why the Atrix landed on AT&T instead of Verizon first is surprising (maybe due to the Verizon iPhone rumors) but it should hit Verizon soon as the Droid Bionic. Anyway after the split from Motorola into Motorola Mobility, the flaling company is in a lot better shape. Not only that, the company has been doing very well with their lineup of android phones.

And the next two monster devices should keep that momentum going. The iPhone is expected to hit Verizon and that could provide a boost to both Apple and Verizon. It is possible that the news is probably mostly baked into the stocks already and if you are from the buy on rumor, sell on news camp, you might want to be prepared to dump those tomorrow.

I’m holding on to my AAPL holdings for atleast a little while more. I might add some Verizon – the 5.5% dividend looks good even though it is a lot less than the 7% just a few months ago before the fast rise of Verizon stock prices.

Disclaimer: I own no stock in any of the companies mentioned in the article except Apple. I do own a Droid X which so far has been great.