Vanguard statements now have portrait orientation.

Discuss all general (i.e. non-personal) investing questions and issues, investing news, and theory.
Post Reply
Topic Author
gkaplan
Posts: 7034
Joined: Sat Mar 03, 2007 7:34 pm
Location: Portland, Oregon

Vanguard statements now have portrait orientation.

Post by gkaplan »

I downloaded my 2013 Quarter 1 Vanguard statement and was pleased to discover that the statements now are in portrait orientation as opposed to the previous landscape orientation.

(I also was pleased how quickly Vanguard made available the Quarter 1 statements – the first day of the new quarter.)
Last edited by gkaplan on Tue Apr 02, 2013 8:33 am, edited 1 time in total.
Gordon
taichifan
Posts: 29
Joined: Thu Sep 20, 2007 8:49 am

Re: Vanguard statements now have portrait orientation.

Post by taichifan »

Annoyingly, mine were still in landscape mode, which I did not discover until I had printed out two of them. However, it was nice to have them on the first day of the month.
umfundi
Posts: 3361
Joined: Tue Jun 07, 2011 5:26 pm

Re: Vanguard statements now have portrait orientation.

Post by umfundi »

Mine are still landscape (do I care?).

We have multiple accounts for various family members. Not all the statements are there (yet?).

Keith
Déjà Vu is not a prediction
Sidney
Posts: 6784
Joined: Thu Mar 08, 2007 5:06 pm

Re: Vanguard statements now have portrait orientation.

Post by Sidney »

umfundi wrote:Mine are still landscape (do I care?).

We have multiple accounts for various family members. Not all the statements are there (yet?).

Keith
When I open mine in the Adobe Reader they are still landscape. Better for viewing this way.
I always wanted to be a procrastinator.
Calm Man
Posts: 2917
Joined: Wed Sep 19, 2012 9:35 am

Re: Vanguard statements now have portrait orientation.

Post by Calm Man »

You made my day. Mine indeed are now upright. I guess they got enough complaints. I still count a maximum of 14 lines available per fund as my money market ran onto a second page. There is still plenty of wasted space and they could still add some more lines but this is an improvement.
linenfort
Posts: 2241
Joined: Sat Sep 22, 2007 9:22 am
Location: #96151D

Re: Vanguard statements now have portrait orientation.

Post by linenfort »

Why is portrait better? Does opening the landscape-oriented PDFs in Adobe require rotation to view? (I don't know because I don't use Adobe).
User avatar
bertilak
Posts: 10725
Joined: Tue Aug 02, 2011 5:23 pm
Location: East of the Pecos, West of the Mississippi

Re: Vanguard statements now have portrait orientation.

Post by bertilak »

linenfort wrote:Why is portrait better?
For the same reason that most written material is in portrait mode. Usually, but depending on the content, it is easier to read that way.

60 lines of text will usually fit on one portrait page but take two landscape pages.

Headers and footers take up (waste?) a bigger percentage of the page in a landscape orientation.

What orientation is the Mona Lisa in? :happy

(I'm disliking landscape mode more and more as I write this!)
May neither drought nor rain nor blizzard disturb the joy juice in your gizzard. -- Squire Omar Barker (aka S.O.B.), the Cowboy Poet
Sidney
Posts: 6784
Joined: Thu Mar 08, 2007 5:06 pm

Re: Vanguard statements now have portrait orientation.

Post by Sidney »

linenfort wrote:Why is portrait better? Does opening the landscape-oriented PDFs in Adobe require rotation to view? (I don't know because I don't use Adobe).
I like the landscape mode because of the aspect ratio of the large lat panel display makes it easy to show a full page on the screen. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter a whole lot. I don't look at statements very long -- just long enough to reconcile the share counts if I have any transactions that quarter. IMO the only data that matters on the statements is the share counts. Once a day clicks by after the statements are struck, the valuations are meaningless.
I always wanted to be a procrastinator.
User avatar
LH
Posts: 5490
Joined: Wed Mar 14, 2007 2:54 am

Re: Vanguard statements now have portrait orientation.

Post by LH »

gkaplan wrote:I downloaded my 2013 Quarter 1 Vanguard statement and was pleased to discover that the statements now are in portrait orientation as opposed to the previous landscape orientation.

(I also was pleased how quickly Vanguard made available the Quarter 1 statements – the first day of the new quarter.)

Heh, we really are Vanguard gearheads here
FinancialDave
Posts: 1819
Joined: Thu May 26, 2011 9:36 pm

Re: Vanguard statements now have portrait orientation.

Post by FinancialDave »

Seems like some are getting special treatment --- maybe the better looking ones need the "portrait" orientation!

I seem to have more of a "backyard" kind of orientation!

:happy
I love simulated data. It turns the impossible into the possible!
Tamahome
Posts: 2325
Joined: Wed Feb 27, 2013 12:03 pm
Location: Atlanta, GA

Re: Vanguard statements now have portrait orientation.

Post by Tamahome »

FinancialDave wrote: I seem to have more of a "backyard" kind of orientation!
+1
I'm not a financial professional. Post is info only & not legal advice. No attorney-client relationship exists with reader. Scrutinize my ideas as if you spoke with a guy at a bar. I may be wrong.
User avatar
mickeyd
Posts: 4898
Joined: Fri Feb 23, 2007 2:19 pm
Location: Deep in the Heart of South Texas

Re: Vanguard statements now have portrait orientation.

Post by mickeyd »

I'm still on the old school mail-it-to-me version. It's one of the few things that I actually like to receive in the mail. I'll report back if there is any change in format when I get it next week.
Part-Owner of Texas | | “The CMH-the Cost Matters Hypothesis -is all that is needed to explain why indexing must and will work… Yes, it is that simple.” John C. Bogle
linenfort
Posts: 2241
Joined: Sat Sep 22, 2007 9:22 am
Location: #96151D

Re: Vanguard statements now have portrait orientation.

Post by linenfort »

Sidney wrote:
linenfort wrote:Why is portrait better? Does opening the landscape-oriented PDFs in Adobe require rotation to view? (I don't know because I don't use Adobe).
I like the landscape mode because of the aspect ratio of the large lat panel display makes it easy to show a full page on the screen.
Same here. My monitor is landscape.

@bertilak: are you using an old, squarish monitor by any chance? Then, the desire for portrait would make sense.
As for the Mona Lisa, well, many fine paintings are in landscape. Landscapes, for example.
User avatar
neurosphere
Posts: 5205
Joined: Sun Jan 17, 2010 12:55 pm

Re: Vanguard statements now have portrait orientation.

Post by neurosphere »

linenfort wrote: @bertilak: are you using an old, squarish monitor by any chance? Then, the desire for portrait would make sense.
As for the Mona Lisa, well, many fine paintings are in landscape. Landscapes, for example.
I have this monitor: http://www.dell.com/ed/business/p/dell-u2913wm/pd

But I STILL prefer portrait. I rarely print anything anymore, but for reading hard copies portrait is better for me. Also, given how large monitors are in general, even in portrait, the entire page can be viewed at full size. The vertical dimensions of most screens are just about 11" nowadays.

anyway, there is no right answer to this. But my preference is most decidedly for portrait layout of all financial statements for both online and hardcopy viewing. :)
NS
If you have to ask "Is a Target Date fund right for me?", the answer is "Yes" (even in taxable accounts).
Carls
Posts: 105
Joined: Sun Nov 02, 2008 5:45 pm

Re: Vanguard statements now have portrait orientation.

Post by Carls »

Having left Vanguard years ago because of their then (for me) complex monthly statement formats, I'm really interested to learn more about recent changes. Do they still report each fund as a separate "account" on separate pages? Or do their funds now get listed row-by-row on the same page so that you can see holdings all at once? (Yes, I did write CJ Dennis at Vanguard's Concierge Services - but he cannot apparently send a "sample" statement.) As I remember, there was also an issue with the name of the Vanguard fund, its abbreviation, and its account number. The statements from a few years ago had these otherwise identical references used in different places and I found that hard to follow. Also at that time, they didn't use the common stock symbols, so one had to keep a "magic" table at hand to translate between financial reports and the monthly statements.

So, any info on current format would be useful to me. Any comparison between the Fidelity statement format with Vanguard's would be a great help, since I'm currently familiar with the former.

Thanks in advance.

Carls
User avatar
mickeyd
Posts: 4898
Joined: Fri Feb 23, 2007 2:19 pm
Location: Deep in the Heart of South Texas

Re: Vanguard statements now have portrait orientation.

Post by mickeyd »

mickeyd wrote:I'm still on the old school mail-it-to-me version. It's one of the few things that I actually like to receive in the mail. I'll report back if there is any change in format when I get it next week.

Landscape Version received...Update received via USPS 4/5/2013.
Part-Owner of Texas | | “The CMH-the Cost Matters Hypothesis -is all that is needed to explain why indexing must and will work… Yes, it is that simple.” John C. Bogle
linenfort
Posts: 2241
Joined: Sat Sep 22, 2007 9:22 am
Location: #96151D

Re: Vanguard statements now have portrait orientation.

Post by linenfort »

neurosphere, makes sense, thanks.
When I can adjust the font-size, like on a mobile device or kindle, I do like having a just a few words to a line for rapid reading, so I guess portrait is closer to that. (Narrow)
I guess with statements, I don't have a preference. I peruse them slowly and leisurely.
User avatar
Epsilon Delta
Posts: 8090
Joined: Thu Apr 28, 2011 7:00 pm

Re: Vanguard statements now have portrait orientation.

Post by Epsilon Delta »

Portrait version received via USPS.

This is for an account that has exactly one fund in it.
User avatar
Blues
Posts: 2501
Joined: Wed Dec 10, 2008 10:58 am
Location: Blue Ridge Mtns

Re: Vanguard statements now have portrait orientation.

Post by Blues »

I just got several statements in the mail for three different accounts and all were still in landscape mode. :confused
User avatar
nisiprius
Advisory Board
Posts: 52215
Joined: Thu Jul 26, 2007 9:33 am
Location: The terrestrial, globular, planetary hunk of matter, flattened at the poles, is my abode.--O. Henry

Re: Vanguard statements now have portrait orientation.

Post by nisiprius »

I just got mine.

Landscape orientation.

And TIPS are still listed with the "name" of the security as a very narrow column eight lines high, e.g.

U.S. TREASURY NOTE
INFLATION INDEX NOTE CPN 1.250% DUE 7/15/20
DTD 07/15/10 FC 01/15/11
Moody Rating AA
REMAIN BAL ######
March FACTOR 105552000
Est. annual income ##### Est yield 1.05%

It is my judgement that if these lines were simply concatenated, separated by commas, and word-wrapped--which I'm told it is possible for modren "data processing" equipment, as they call it, to do--that they would easily fit in three lines. (Even less if they didn't insist on making all of the dollar columns wide enough to allow for the possibility of my being a multi-billionaire).

An inch is wasted at the top with nothing but the Vanguard logo sitting in lonely splendor at the right end of a strip of pure white virgin paper.

Another inch and a half for a heading.

A grand total of two, count them two TIPS.

And then two inches of pure empty white space at the bottom.

Vanguard is sending me enough paper to supply a backyard privy... I believe they are passive-aggressively trying to shame me into going paperless. Oh-ho, want paper, does you? You want paper, you GET paper! Quires of paper! Reams of paper! Bundles and barrels and tierces and metric hogsheads of paper! Take THIS, Luddite! Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!
Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness; Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.
Post Reply