Vanguard not "all that?"

When working, I had two retirement accounts, a 401a and a 403b, with TIAA-Cref and Fidelity respectively. Combined, they total about $40,000. I was considering combining them both into one IRA fund for simplicity's sake, and so I began looking at my options.

Among my top considerations was moving them into an IRA fund at Vanguard. It seems I'm constantly hearing about how low the fees are at Vanguard, in addition to them having generally good funds. I began doing some research into what I'd be paying if I moved my money over to Vanguard and invested in 4-5 funds, choosing index funds where it was possible or seemed preferable.

The fees on the funds I was mostly interested in were definitely reasonable (under 1%), though not much lower--if at all--than what I was paying at Fidelity. In addition, Vanguard charges a $10 annual fee for each index fund in which the amount invested is below $10,000. Since I only have $40,000 total to invest, I'd likely have to pay this fee for at least a couple of my funds. I also looked at the YTD returns of both my Fidelity funds and the Vanguard funds I was interested in. In most cases, the Fidelity funds had shown a stronger YTD return.

I finally gave up and decided just to leave my money where it was for the time being. Both portfolios are doing fairly well, except I did get out of one stinky small-cap growth fund in my Fidelity portfolio that had an expense ratio of 1.16% and YTD return of only 1.48%. I am left wondering whether Vanguard is just more transparent about its fees and so it just looks like it costs more to invest with them--i.e., are there "hidden" fees at Fidelity or TIAA-Cref that I simply don't know about? Hmmm...