via Wall Street Journal
Target-date funds keep growing in popularity for retirement accounts. But many investors may be paying higher fees on these funds than they need to.
The funds are pitched as automated retirement-planning assets. They are mutual funds made up of other funds—stock, bond and money-market funds—and adjust the balance, getting more conservative as they approach the target date, near the person’s expected retirement.
But fees often take a sizable bite out of a fund’s returns—particularly a fund designed to be left alone for decades. What’s more, fees are perhaps the only determinant of a fund’s performance that an investor can actually be sure of ahead of time, which makes them particularly important to monitor.
