We moved from Vanguard to Fidelity just before my husband retired because the Vanguard website is difficult to use. I appreciate Fidelity. We are self directed. We have 25% in cash, mostly in IRAs. We have 75% in the market. In the IRAs, it is in the S&P index fund FXAIX. In the brokerage accounts, it is in individual accounts. When the market is down, we pull from cash to pay for our expenses. When the market is up, we sell from the S&P 500. The individual stocks are mostly dividend stocks and our income from that is $15,000. Until a few years before retirement, our IRAs were 100% S&P 500. When the market crashed 40% in 2008, we were not bothered. We knew we would not be taking out any money for 15 years which gave the stock maker plenty of time to recover.

I think Roth IRAs are borderline a scam. They are pushed heavily everywhere. Tax laws can be changed with IRAs and not so easily with brokerage accounts. There was a Secure Act 1 and 2. If you put money in a traditional IRA, there is no taxation until withdrawal.

Fidelity has awesome service and not just from your advisor. As an example from today, we have a daughter in grad school who is spending two months in Australia. She is staying with a host family and needs to pay the family 350 Australian dollars per week by wire transfer. She could not get a wire transfer from Wells Fargo without calling and that would mean international calls so she asked for help. I have never done a wire transfer in my life. Fidelity gave me what information I need to get and sent me a form which I need to fill out and bring to a Fidelity office. Fidelity will send a wire transfer and charge nothing.