Author Topic: Tracking investment fees?  (Read 2768 times)

financialforager

  • 5 O'Clock Shadow
  • *
  • Posts: 31
    • Financial Forager
Tracking investment fees?
« on: September 06, 2014, 03:11:53 PM »
Does anyone track their investment fees? If so how? What methods do you use?

Ybserp

  • 5 O'Clock Shadow
  • *
  • Posts: 96
Re: Tracking investment fees?
« Reply #1 on: September 06, 2014, 03:16:06 PM »
Yes. I look the funds up on MorningStar.

financialforager

  • 5 O'Clock Shadow
  • *
  • Posts: 31
    • Financial Forager
Re: Tracking investment fees?
« Reply #2 on: September 06, 2014, 03:27:16 PM »
What is your fee thresholds? I try not to go over .10%

Ybserp

  • 5 O'Clock Shadow
  • *
  • Posts: 96
Re: Tracking investment fees?
« Reply #3 on: September 06, 2014, 03:38:55 PM »
I'm focused on return first. I try to minimize fees, but not all the funds are that low. My spouse had a financial adviser. (Yes, yes, I know. Bad.) But he did enter the marriage with positive investments that might otherwise just have been increased spending had the adviser not hooked him during a seminar with free food.

I have recently convinced my darling spouse to let me sell the higher expense ratio funds as part of this year's asset allocation rebalancing. Our old average expense ratio was 0.293%. Our new average expense ratio will be 0.057% once all the shares are converted.

RyeWhiskey

  • 5 O'Clock Shadow
  • *
  • Posts: 83
Re: Tracking investment fees?
« Reply #4 on: September 06, 2014, 04:10:50 PM »
If you pay attention on the front end and invest in low cost, broadly diversified, index funds, you don't really need to track your fees. Seems like you'd only need to do so if you were racking up a lot, as in with day trading or speculative assets.

Ybserp

  • 5 O'Clock Shadow
  • *
  • Posts: 96
Re: Tracking investment fees?
« Reply #5 on: September 06, 2014, 05:48:39 PM »
If you are just getting started with index funds and you don't really understand what an index fund gives you, it is possible to buy a lot of slice and diced bits of index funds (even through Vanguard) and end up with <1% fees but also with a $20/yr per fund under $10k fee because you've got a lot of smaller balances. There are definitely ways to cost yourself money even with index funds.

NorCal

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 1464
Re: Tracking investment fees?
« Reply #6 on: September 06, 2014, 06:32:20 PM »
The acceptable rate completely depends on the type of fund.  Fees will be different in an S&P index fund than a bond fund or an emerging market fund.

Once you decide your allocations, look at the expense ratios on 3-4 funds from major providers to get a sense of market rates in that category.