401k fees & allocation

[greenskeeper]

So we had our annual 401k meeting at work. I was shocked as to how conservative the plan administrator advised the group. Also talking to coworkers they are losing a lot of value in fund management fees....as high as 6% for a fellow worker.

Personally, I'm in my late 30s and have always been 100% allocated to stocks since starting my 401k when I turned 18. My annual management fee is 1.15%

[disneysteve]

6% is nuts. What are they investing in that charges such a high fee?

[greenskeeper]

6% is nuts. What are they investing in that charges such a high fee?

That's total fees for the entire portfolio, so they have a lot of funds that charge close to 1% each to manage.

[corn18]

That's total fees for the entire portfolio, so they have a lot of funds that charge close to 1% each to manage.

The fees are not cumulative, so saying it has 6% fees is misleading. I have a spreadsheet that tracks my weighted average fee for my entire investment portfolio and it runs around 0.19%. If I had an average weighted fee of 1%, that would cost me an extra $7k a year.

1% fees aren't the worst I've seen. My MIL averages 1.49% on her funds from her financial advisor. The highest is 1.9% and she is in a lot of front/back end loaded funds that charge to buy the fund, charge to own the fund and then charge to sell the fund. Total cost runs about 4% just for the privilege of owning a fund with below average performance.

[disneysteve]

That's total fees for the entire portfolio, so they have a lot of funds that charge close to 1% each to manage.

If each of their six funds charge 1%, that means they are paying 1% overall, not 6%.