Mutual funds are a great way for people to invest in the stock market. By allowing for instant diversification, investors without a lot of money are able to control risk and earn a higher return than if they kept their money sitting in a bank savings account.

But as much as I like mutual funds, there is a dark side to them, namely fees. Now both mutual funds and exchange traded funds charge fees to investors. After all, you have a management team running the mutual fund and they need to get paid for doing their job.

But some mutual funds take the fees they charge too far. And in some cases, they hide these fees really well. The fees will be labeled in ways that the average person won’t understand them or even won’t know that the fee is outrageously high.

So today we are going to look at mutual fund fees. By the end of this post, you will be able to take a better look at what you are investing in and understand the secret costs of mutual funds.

Photo Source

The Secret Costs Of Mutual Funds

#1. Management Fee

This fee isn’t so much a secret as mutual fund companies are required to clearly disclose this cost and most investors are aware of it. Unfortunately though, most investors don’t know just how large of an impact it has on the long term growth of their investments.

At the end of the day, the higher the management fee, the more you are paying to invest in a fund. And despite what you might have heard, there is zero correlation between a high expense ratio and better returns. The two are mutually exclusive.

To allow your money to grow the most for you over the long term, you should keep this fee as low as possible. In fact, smart investors keep this fee to under 0.50% for each fund. This can be difficult for small cap mutual funds and international funds, but there are low cost options out there.

#2. Load

This is a common misunderstood secret costs of mutual funds. There are load funds and no load funds. A load fund charges you a percent of your investment to invest in the fund, typically 5.75%, whereas a no load fund doesn’t charge you anything to invest.