The Problem With Mutual Funds
When you buy mutual funds, you are charged a purchase fee upfront. This is a one-time payment to the fund management institution. Annually, you will be charged with a percentage of management fees, commonly known as “expense ratio”, which can be expensive.
Beware when advisors at your bank recommend mutual funds to buy. They might be earning a sales commission.
MORE IDEAS FROM THE ARTICLE
By following the conventional path of "school to loan to university to work" you risk running into serious debt. Being creative is a potential way to lessen or eliminate that.
Maybe finding a different and cheaper way of doing the same thing, doing a yard sale or getting a side job… Put your mind to it and you may find ways to get a financial boost.
- Financial fees. Consider negotiating them with your banker or changing banks.
- Interest for short-term debt. If you cannot avoid it completely, then use a bank that charges less interest.
- Stocks brokerage account fees. Usually comes as monthly account fees and trading fees.
- Mutual funds management fees or “expense ratio.” Those are charged annually and can go over 2%.
One way to save money is to identify and cut down on recurring expenses that don’t add value to your life. A good rule of thumb is to cancel if it is something you might want to use “someday.”
Even if the recurring expense offers you value, you can investigate how you can reduce it without sacrificing comfort in your daily life.
- Saving: automatically transfer every month from your income into a savings account.
- Investing: do “dollar-cost averaging” if you’re familiar with the cave eats of trading stocks, ETFs, bonds or mutual funds. It consists of a stock trading account set to automatically buy them for a fixed amount of money every month.
- Reinvesting: reinvest the yields from your investments by instructing your manager to buy stocks with the money.
You should automate what you can so you don’t have to keep off the discipline to do those things.
Automating aspects of your personal finance can afford you more time and mental capacity to focus on other aspects of life.
Frugality cannot be the sole cornerstone of our personal finance strategy.
Because we can’t save more than what we earn and saving by itself leads to losses, due to inflation devaluing your money.
RELATED IDEAS
First manage the money you do have, then use your money to generate more money. You don't need to think about investing until you're out of debt and have multiple ways of generating income.
- Use the 90/10 rule, where only 10% is used on speculation.
- Find the type of investment that best fits your personality. Some people will invest in commercial real estate, while others prefer index funds and bonds.
A clear set of goals can keep you motivated and help you plan to reach it faster.
Have different goals for what you want to achieve in the next 3-months, 1 year and 5 years. This way you'll have some short and long-term goals to look forward too.