My husband and I are early-retired, in good financial shape, and most of our assets are in index funds at Fidelity. We've got a couple of holdovers from before we learned Bogleheads principles, and we're considering rolling them over. In particular, my husband has two retirement accounts from when he was employed at a non-profit. They're both at TIAA, and in each, he has two funds: TIAA Traditional (which is a question for another day), and TIAA CREF Growth R1 (QCGRRX).
The latter is a managed growth fund with a .46% expense ratio. If this were something we were holding at Fidelity, unless there was something extraordinary about it, I'd sell it and buy an index fund with a lower expense ratio instead. We won't need it for a long while. Should we roll it over into a Fidelity index fund (either a growth fund or something else, depending what our allocation needs)? Is there any good reason to consider leaving it where it is instead?
In particular, a TIAA rep explained to me long ago that an advantage of these funds is that they're annuitizable. I don't really understand why that's an advantage. Isn't anything annuitizable, in that I could sell it and buy an annuity with the proceeds? In what way are these more/better annuitizable? I asked the rep that at the time, and he wasn't able to explain it in a way I understood, although he did say that perhaps the annuity rates could be better than what we'd otherwise get... but he couldn't give me specifics. Is it enough of an advantage that it justifies leaving these assets in place? Or should we go ahead and roll this part of the TIAA accounts over?
The latter is a managed growth fund with a .46% expense ratio. If this were something we were holding at Fidelity, unless there was something extraordinary about it, I'd sell it and buy an index fund with a lower expense ratio instead. We won't need it for a long while. Should we roll it over into a Fidelity index fund (either a growth fund or something else, depending what our allocation needs)? Is there any good reason to consider leaving it where it is instead?
In particular, a TIAA rep explained to me long ago that an advantage of these funds is that they're annuitizable. I don't really understand why that's an advantage. Isn't anything annuitizable, in that I could sell it and buy an annuity with the proceeds? In what way are these more/better annuitizable? I asked the rep that at the time, and he wasn't able to explain it in a way I understood, although he did say that perhaps the annuity rates could be better than what we'd otherwise get... but he couldn't give me specifics. Is it enough of an advantage that it justifies leaving these assets in place? Or should we go ahead and roll this part of the TIAA accounts over?
Statistics: Posted by Sylvie — Wed Jan 08, 2025 2:40 pm — Replies 2 — Views 42