Kris,

A few more comments in part a response to some posted after my initial post.

I would reinforce Tim's suggestion (he may not have said it this way) that what is important between Fidelity and T-C is not so much the firm itself (they both have pluses and minuses and I have experience with both) but what investment choices are available to you in the plan offered to you at each. 

In the past I had access to a good friend's 401-k for a Fortune 500 firm that was offered via Fidelity and though there was a wide choice of investment options in the plan there were some Fidelity funds which I had expected to be in it that were not. With T-C it is not clear as to how much variation there is in the funds available to the participant with respect to tax code of the plan and also to the specifications and limits specified by the funding organization, not by T-C itself.

Therefore, I suggest you find out what investment options are available in each. Fidelity does indeed have some very inexpensive (they like to advertise the least inexpensive) index funds but if these are not available in your plan they might as well not exist in as far as you are concerned.

I am quite fond of Sy, in general he and I tend to have similar investment strategies but I would not agree with the inference in his post that YOU should do what he would do IF he had to start all over again! I am not one to recommend a 100% equity portfolio to anyone but neither do I agree one should have 0 equity (real estate technically is not equity but let's not open that can of worms here). I do agree with Sy that at T-C, the best and unique investments are the TIAA Traditional Account and the TIAA Real Estate Account and that alone would be enough for me to recommend it over Fidelity.

If I had to make a recommendation for you, it would be to start with something like this; it could be changed later when economic conditions are less confused than they are right now. I would suggest 25% in the TIAA Traditional Account (an account with a guarantedd minimum rate of return of 3% per year backed by what may well be the best financed insurance company in the nation), 25% in the TIAA Real Estate Account (not doing that well now because of the credit crisis and concern for the overall economy but which will bounce back and is a very sound investment in commercial real estate), and 50% invested in equities.

With respect to the investment in equity, the simplest thing to do would be to put it all in the TIAA Stock Account which is well diversifed acorss market capitalizations and across domestic US stocks and international ones. We could do other things with the equity such as using T-C's quite low cost index mutual funds - not a low in cost as some that are available at Fidelity - but that need not be done now. You can always change the allocation later.

These are just my personal preferences. I have to admit I have not had a lot of luck in having my kids follow it but then again they do at least invest some in the Traditional Account and in the Real Estate Account!

Ray