ETF for children's UTMA

[RU4SCUBA]

I was thinking of interesting in an ETF for my son's UTMA (ITOT iShares core S&P total US stock market ETF). I currently have their 529s in Fidelity's Total Market index fund (FTMX), and thought it might be interesting to try something a little different, pretty much based on the fact that I've never done anything with ETFs and thought this might be a good learning opportunity.

When I went to purchase the ETF, however, it certainly didn't seem quite as straightforward as purchasing the good old total market index fund. Asking questions such as order type and time in force, and leaving me a little intimidated.

Any thoughts?

[The White Coat Investor]

Just opened three more of these this weekend. Decided not to go the ETF route. I just put it all into the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund admiral shares. Any particular reason you want to do ETFs?

It is a little more complicated to buy ETFs than mutual funds. You're going to have to learn how to buy something on the open market. That's how you buy individual stocks and ETFs. It's not THAT hard though.

You just put a limit order in at the price it's currently trading at, leave it in force for the day. Check on it in 10 minutes and if it hasn't executed, adjust the price a bit. The ETFs you should be buying are very liquid and you could even just do a market order without some terrible consequences 99% of the time.

[bean1970]

If truly buying for long haul (15-20 years), the easiest IMO is a market order. Just set it and forget it. Don't have to check on anything. I had recurrent market orders set up weekly for 15 years in one account. Timing orders is obviously more important with day trading, etc. But for the long haul a market order is really no different than buying a mutual fund which gets executed at market close.