Thank you all for the helpful advice. I am curious if anyone would ever recommend a fund with a higher expense ratios for particular reasons like the turnover or the sectors in wich the funds holdings are in, the top companies, etc?
The questions to ask here are "what is this fund doing" and "what are the fees and preformences of similar funds"
If it is a passive index fund (one that matches a particular benchmark, like the SP500 or the Dow Jones Industrial Average) there is absolutely no reason to pay any more than the absolute minimum fees available. If it actively picks stocks within a sector the question becomes "can the fund beat its benchmark after fees". Very few funds can do this (around 20% after 5 years) so this is why investing in index funds with low fees is such a popular suggestion here. It is very very hard to pick a fund that will consistently beat the benchmark after fees year after year.
Also, certain sectors, like international funds, will have inherently higher fees than investing in the SP500, simply because there's more the fund has to do (foreign currencies, tax laws, etc). That's why you can't find any international funds with fees under 0.4% Even with these higher fees you still may want to include international growth funds in an AA because it gives you something that an SP500 fund won't - exposure to developing countries in foreign markets.
hope that helps more than it confuses.