Expense Ratio
An expense ratio is the annual fee a fund charges you, skimmed silently off your returns as a percentage of your investment. A 1% fee sounds tiny — until you realize it's 1% every single year, compounding against you for decades. Fees are one of the few reliable predictors of fund performance: lower almost always wins.
Example: On $100,000 growing at 7%, a 1% annual fee versus a 0.1% fee costs you roughly $150,000 over 30 years.
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Educational content only — not financial advice.