I am approaching the 10k min. mark.

Worth transferring the money over?

I have a ROTH IRA.

The admiral class shares will have a lower expense ratio since you have >10k in the fund, aside from these expense everything else will stay the same (i.e. fund investments, manager, performance, etc.). Most funds will automatically exchange you to the higher class share, they typically check monthly to see if your position is above the 10K watermark and will automatically upgrade you at that time if so, alternatively you can manually upgrade once you hit 10k. Over time, those expense ratios can eat into your profit, so having a lower ratio will add up over time.

I liked how the target fund would transfer from stocks to bonds as I get closer to retirement.

I don't think the admiral shares will do the same however?

Correct.  There is no such thing as an Admiral Target Date Fund.
If you have only $10k total and desired admiral shares you would only be able to invest in a single fund.  To duplicate a Target Date Fund with Admiral shares would require a minimum of $30k and even then, you would be stuck at a 30/30/30 split for Total Stock Market, International and Total Bond.  From there you would have to use new contributions to get the ratio desired because of the $10k minimum and it would not automatically adjust to more conservative as you go like a Target Date Fund would.

Other than the lower expense, is it worth it to switch with that in mind?

Which year target date fund are you in.

All I can say is I have priced the fees on plenty of other companies target date funds and none even come close(except Fidelity's index based TD but it's performance is nowhere as good as good as Vanguards) to Vanguards low fees.
Which means you will literally be out many thousands of dollars if one chose another companies TD fund.
I would only get into a TD fund if you are truly using it as the mainstay fund for retirement.

2035.

I am hopefully retiring in 2018 and am seriously eying Vanguards 2020 TD fund myself.
Simple and low cost.

The only reason to switch would be lower funds.  It's not really worth the trouble at the funding level we are talking about unless you like tinkering with this kind of stuff.  It can be worth it when you are talking about a couple hundred thousand plus, but that's still marginal as another poster pointed out, you are already well above the industry standards in expense ratios.  The original poster stated he did not wish to re-balance as he went so it may not be worth it to him.

Vanguard offers two kinds of shares in many of their funds.  Investor and Admiral.  Admiral shares have a slightly lower cost if you're above the required minimum.  Usually 10k invested in that one fund.  Once your are above 10k or the minimum for that fund it is automatically converted to Admiral shares.  I think they only convert back to Investor shares if you drop below the minimum due to withdrawals. This of course is only relevant if they offer Investor and Admiral shares for the specific fund you are looking at.

If NickV is accurately describing what you want to do, then the reason the fund has a higher expense than the other funds that make up the target date fund is because they're automatically doing the re-balancing for you.

I don't believe they do, I'll have to look.

Thanks guys.

The current expense ratio on the Vanguard Target Retirement Fund is 0.15%.  If I remember correctly, Vanguard does not charge additional fees for the Target funds, other than to the underlying funds.



From their website regarding what happens if you convert to Admiral shares, then the balance falls below 10k ,   **If your balance in the fund drops below the minimum requirement, your account may be automatically reclassified to Investor Shares. As with a conversion, this would be tax-free.