Hello,
I wanted to ask a couple of questions about Commingled Funds and whether you guys would recommend them. My wife works for a company where she owns stocks from years of employee stock purchase plan. That company was just acquired by another which has no common stock. All of her stock will then be liquidated and put into a "Commingled Fund", a concept that I personally had not ever heard of until I looked it up. It is like a mutual fund but generally not available to individuals and generally serves as an option to institutions. Based on information I was able gather, I made a preliminary list of pros and cons of leaving my wife's money in these funds:
Pros:
- Low expense ratio .15%; the individual funds you can choose from are named 'Commingled target retirement funds 20xx'; I think .15% is generally on the cheaper side for target retirement funds that are actively managed
- It is the default option; having done absolutely nothing your stocks will be transfered to the target retirement fund closest to your retirement year; not bad for a lazy option?
Cons:
- Poor Transparency; because 'Commingled Funds' do not have the same reporting standards as Mutual funds they do not report performance or funds allocation as consistently
- Actively Managed; combined with poor transparency makes for a difficult sell though the expense ratios are low for an actively managed target retirement fund; maybe you are getting the best of both worlds?
This is all I could think of. There is not a lot of information about these types of funds, so I was wondering if anyone could advise me and let me know if there is something I am not considering.
Thank you!
