Each week you'll learn how to be a better dividend investor and follow the journey of a welder with a passion for passive income to $1,000,000 and beyond.
Share
🚨Breaking News: I'm Selling VTI!
Published 3 months ago • 4 min read
I can't believe it. I'm actually going to be selling The Vanguard Total Stock Market Fund (VTI) this week.
I know, I know. This is the same guy who has been preaching VTI as if it were the gospel of investing. The same fund that's making my wife look like a stock market genius when she started automatically investing $50 a week in December 2023 and has a 28.08% gain as of June 2025. The same VTI that I call the "easy button" for anyone who wants to own the entire US stock market without overthinking it.
My wife's ROTH at Fidelity
But someone called me out on social media, and they had a point I didn't have a good answer for.
After I posted about my wife's incredible results from her Fidelity ROTH portfolio, someone commented: "Why are you throwing 0.03% out the window when FZROX exists?"
And you know what? They're absolutely right.
FZROX is Fidelity's total stock market fund that costs exactly $0.00. No expense ratio. No management fees. Nothing. Meanwhile, VTI charges 0.03% annually, which works out to $0.30 for every $1,000 you invest per year.
I mean, $0.30 per year on a $1,000 investment is ridiculously low. To put that in perspective, most actively managed funds charge 1% or more, which would be $10 on that same $1,000. So VTI's 0.03% is already incredibly cheap.
But free is still free, right?
Here's what I discovered when I dug into FZROX. It owns about 2,600 companies compared to VTI's 3,500, and both funds are dominated by the exact same Mag 7 names. Apple, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Amazon, Google. The missing companies in FZROX are mostly micro-cap companies that have minimal impact.
FZROX vs VTO total return comparison
The total return performance? Almost identical. Over the past five years, VTI returned 93.76%, while FZROX delivered 93.03%. My wife's 28% gain happened during one of the best two-year market runs we've seen in decades, and both funds captured that ride beautifully.
There's a catch with FZROX that you should be aware of. You can only hold it at Fidelity. If you ever want to switch to Schwab or another broker, you'd have to sell the fund and buy something else, which could create a taxable event. VTI, you can take it anywhere.
FZROX is also a mutual fund (that's what the 'X' at the end means), so it trades only once per day and pays dividends once per year, typically in December. VTI is an ETF that trades throughout the day and pays quarterly dividends.
FZROX Dividend Payment Details on SimplySafeDividends.com
If you're already with Fidelity and plan to buy and hold for decades, FZROX is fantastic, especially in retirement accounts where the tax differences don't matter.
Will I be selling VTI in all our other accounts to make the switch? No. The $3 annual difference on $10,000 isn't worth the hassle of moving everything for me. But for my wife's Roth IRA at Fidelity? Yeah, we're going with FZROX.
The beautiful thing about both these funds is that they give you the same thing - a slice of almost every public company in America.
My wife doesn't need to understand price-to-earnings ratios, read annual reports, or worry about what stocks are overvalued. She just needs to keep buying either VTI or FZROX regularly, and she will participate in the long-term growth of American businesses.
So if you're at Fidelity and looking for the ultimate "set it and forget it" investment, FZROX deserves a serious look. If you want maximum flexibility and don't mind paying $0.30 per year on every $1,000, VTI is still a fantastic choice.
Just remember, her 28% gain happened during two exceptionally strong market years. Don't expect that every year, but do expect both funds to capture whatever the market delivers over time.
The "easy button" for investing isn't going anywhere, but it just might be completely free if you're in the right place.
Hit reply and let me know if you're invested in VTI or FZROX, or both! I'll respond to every reply!
Disclaimer: This is not investment advice, just one person's opinion. Do your own research before making any investment decisions.
😁THANK YOU to all who responded to the last newsletter!!
Click the image above, sign up for a 7-day free trial, get $30 off an annual PREMIUM SeekingAlpha.com subscription + the next Alpha Pick FREE!
*This is an affiliate offer, and I will receive a small commission at no additional cost when you buy a premium annual subscription after clicking the image above.
Introductory offer for first-time subscribers only. $30 off Premium for the first year. At the end of the free trial (or immediately if you are no longer eligible for a free trial), $269 is charged automatically for the first year of your annual subscription. Auto-renews at the then-current annual list price (current list price is $299). You will receive the May 15th strong buy pick from Alpha Picks. The pick will be sent via email to your email address associated with your Seeking Alpha account.
Each week you'll learn how to be a better dividend investor and follow the journey of a welder with a passion for passive income to $1,000,000 and beyond.
🚨A quick word: I'll be a guest speaker at the Blossom Investor event in Chicago on Tuesday, October 7th. Grab a 15% discount with DAPPER15.🚨 Don't you just love hearing old people talk? Last week, my earholes were pleasantly penetrated with the wise words of Howard Marks on the My First Million Podcast and one idea stuck. Getting ideas to stick like Band-aids can be quite the challenge when we're buried with a daily avalanche of information. Unless Elon Musk is going to put an memory chip...
It finally happened. For the first time in 538 days, the CEO of a company I own bought more of his stock with personal cash. Joey Agree, CEO of and you'll never believe it Agree Realty (ADC) bought 4,850 shares x $72.15 for $349,928 of his own money. No stock options, grants or gifts from the company. CEO-Buys.com When a CEO buys their own stock, it's a great sign because they're telling us loud and clear they expect the share price to be higher than it is right now. And, when you couple that...
What if a company that's been paying monthly dividends for 56 years was using an accounting trick to make their investments look better than they really are? That's exactly what I discovered about Realty Income (O) - 'the monthly dividend company' - and it made me start selling my shares. I was reading through some Seeking Alpha comments when I stumbled across someone pointing out an accounting trick that Realty Income uses. I often find the comment sections more valuable than the actual...
