This year I’d like to try another service available to investors in Australia that is very affordable and it’s Vanguard’s Personal Investor.
Having tried a few other platforms for investing such as Raiz, CommSec Pocket, Stake and Superhero, I’ve consolidated my investments from Raiz and Superhero to Vanguard Personal Investor.
The appeal of Vanguard is that they have been at the forefront of index fund investing and enabling smaller investors a piece of the larger market pie. While they are not the only ETF provider they are one of the largest.
Improving on their ETF creations they have also enabled investors to directly access their ETFs (as well as others for a fee).
The platform used is what is known as the Vanguard Personal Investor and it even has its own basic mobile app.
Getting Started
Setting up a Vanguard Personal Investor (VPI) account is quite straightforward and easy to do online.
Simply navigate to the home page and click on the Register button and proceed through all the prompts. It took me less than 5 minutes to set up.
Download Vanguard App
You can also login to your Vanguard Personal Investor account through a mobile app.
The app is quite simple and only allows for basic functionality as at the time of writing this at the beginning of 2022.
Placing Initial Investment
There are some minimums when placing your first trade, therefore when transferring funds to your new Vanguard account you might want to ensure you have enough to meet the minimums.
Once you’re funds are cleared you’re ready to go with placing your first investment.
Once you’ve logged into the Vanguard mobile app and selected your account you’ll be presented with a plus icon to place your first investment.
Click this button and enter the name of the manager fund you want to invest. I’ve opted to choose to invest into the Ethically Conscious International Fund.
Click on the tile of the fund you want to invest.
Next you’ll be presented with the amount you want to invest.
Once you’ve entered an amount tap on the Next option in the lower-right corner.
The confirmation screen shows your order, check everything looks good and if so click on Agree.
Once you’ve confirmed your order you will need to verify with the SMS code.
Once the SMS code has been confirmed you’ll see a final order confirmation screen and a subsequent Next Steps section to tell you what will be happening next.
That’s it! Your initial investment is done.
You will see the pending order on the home screen of your account, and should you need you can cancel by tapping on the tile and then scrolling to the bottom and cancelling the order.
Order Completed
Once your order has been placed you will see from the login page your holdings. Now that my initial placement in the Ethically Conscious has been placed I now see the following:
Summary
Vanguard’s Personal Investor allows for free investment into Vanguard’s ETFs through their managed funds and permits investing into other products for a brokerage fee.
The great benefit of VPI is the ease of having everything managed centrally, however it does come at a higher cost than the other alternatives available in the marketplace today – such as Raiz, CommSec Pocket, Stake or Superhero.
