No Transaction Fee Mutual Fund

Note that this says "no transaction fee." Not “no fee.”

So…what transaction are we talking about then? The transaction of buying the fund itself? Like...do we need to go take a quick refresher and see: No Load? Or is this no transaction fee on each trade the fund makes? Or when we redeem the fund? Or the annual fee? Is that a transaction?

Yeah, well what do they say about a free lunch? Same here.

There are always fees. Do you really think Wall Street people can afford those nice suits working for free? Not at all. So there are transaction fees…they’re just buried somewhere. Probably in the annual management fee, such that you’re paying the fund 1% a year to manage your money, and that money just quietly gets taken out of your account without you having to write a check every month to the fund managers for it. And yes, we’re guessing that if you had to separately write that check every month, a whole lot fewer people would be invested in mutual funds.

So when you hear “no fee” anything, um, don’t believe it. Not for a second. It just means the fee is buried. We just don’t think "Buried Transaction Fee Mutual Fund" would be a very good marketing slogan.