Setting up automatic investing contributions in trading account

If it’s a set amount each month, week, biweekly, etc, you can set up automatic investments on fidelity. I use this for my Roth IRA. Takes a bit of upfront work to set it up for 5 funds, but I think it does what you’re looking for.

ETA: I've only done this with mutual funds. Not sure if it works for anything else

Ever looked at M1 Finance? Pretty sure you can set up weekly, biweekly, monthly transfers and it will auto invest into whatever basket of ETFs or stocks based on your selected allocations

Robo-advisor services are the new thing. Dollar cost averaging and rebalancing means muted performance until the investment base is large enough.

Most brokers have the robo-advisors now. Most brokers do have some sort of automated investing service.

Vanguard has it (since you mentioned low-cost is a driving decision for you).

If you're already a Schwab client, check out Schwab’s Automatic Investment Plan (it appears that it may be mutual fund only).

What is AIP?

Schwab’s Automatic Investment Plan (AIP) is a service that serves as a dollar-cost averaging program* allowing you to invest a fixed dollar amount at regular intervals in an eligible mutual fund held in your account. There is no charge for this service.

What funds are eligible for AIP?

All funds that are part of Schwab’s Mutual Fund OneSource® service and certain other funds are eligible. You must have an initial position in an eligible fund prior to enrolling in AIP.

What is the minimum amount required to start AIP?

Once you have an initial position in an eligible mutual fund, you may invest as little as $100 per fund per transaction.

How often can I invest?

You determine the schedule—twice monthly, monthly or quarterly. Quarterly investments take place during the first month of each quarter (January, April, July and October).

I’m not sure if this is exactly what you’re looking for, but one of the brokerages I use is M1 Finance, because you can create “pies” and set a percentage allocation, and every time you fund it (I do it every Monday) it targets that specific allocation (they call it dynamic rebalancing) you set automatically.

Helpful responses, thanks everyone. I’ve generally read that ETFs are a bit more tax efficient than mutual funds for taxable account holdings so my bias is to be able to use those. The Schwab AIP process for mutual funds seems to hit the mark as a possible solution (just not with ETFs).

A) I haven’t looked at all of them, but VFIAX hasn’t paid a CG since 1999.

B) If you’re only investing monthly and you’re that fee conscious, why not just do it yourself once a month?

Update: Decided to go the index mutual fund route via Schwab doing automatic investing. Figured out the blend of assets and set for twice a month withdrawals.

80/20 US/Foreign
70/20/10 Large/Mid/Small cap

Time to let it ride