Format for printing

Part 1: Mutual fund fees

So, do you know where your money is currently invested and how much you are paying on those investments? 

Get a sense of the fees on your mutual funds. To get a sense of the fees on the mutual funds that you already own, head on over to the PersonalFund Mutual Fund Cost Calculator. Type in the ticker for any mutual fund you own, enter the amount you currently have invested, and you'll discover what your annual costs of ownership are and what these costs amount to over time.

If you don't currently own mutual funds, but are thinking of buying some, use this calculator at Folio[fn] to determine your costs. This calculator will include the initial cost of buying the fund in the data it provides you (this cost, called a "front-end load," is the one-time expense applied to the amount you invest in a fund).

The value to you of using these calculators, hopefully, is to confirm what you had suspected: your money is in a fund which has served you well; better, in fact, than an index fund would have. Again, that's something that a minority of investors would discover by examining the returns of their funds against comparable index funds, but there are of course some funds which pass the test.

Are you happy with the average returns of your investments? Click here to answer, and to see what your classmates have to say. 

Tools you can use:

• PersonalFund Mutual Fund Cost Calculator
  
• Folio[fn] calculator
  
• Morningstar and SmartMoney provide good breakdowns of fees, in case the fund for some reason is not in the calculators.

Compare these costs with those of some index funds. Enter the tickers of a couple of no-load index funds, like Vanguard's 500 Index (ticker: VFINX) or Vanguard's Total Stock Market Index Fund (ticker: VTSMX), to see what the costs of index funds are in comparison to what you now own.

Track this information in your retirement workbook on pages 15 and 16. This will allow you to generally benchmark the rate of return of your mutual fund investments and evaluate your current rate of return so you can make some decisions a little later.

So, you've looked at your mutual funds and the calculator and you have some questions? I took some time to answer some questions past seminar participants had about their mutual funds. Check out this conversation and join in. How have your investments done over the past few years? If you are invested in mutual funds, how did you get started? What are your perceived benefits and drawbacks to such investments?

Want some more info? Try these resources, which are also listed on your resource list:

Motley Fool Index Center

The Truth About Mutual Funds

The S&P 500 Index Fund

All About IRAs

Is Your 401(k) Foolish?

LlamaWeb.com

« Lesson Summary

Lesson 5: Investing Now and Later »