THE SHORT · INVESTING
The management fee is the only one of your six fees you know about
0.67% advertised, 1.30% paid. The other five sources appear on no line of your statement — and together they nearly match the first.
Your portfolio is $35,840. Your funds' management expense ratio says 0.67%, which is $240 over the year. That is the figure you know, because it is the only one written down anywhere.
Here are the six.
| Source | Over twelve months |
|---|---|
| Management expense ratio (0.67%) | $240.00 |
| Fund trading expenses | $18.00 |
| Brokerage commissions (4 × $9.95) | $39.80 |
| Bid-ask spread (0.08% on $12,000 of orders) | $9.60 |
| Currency conversion (1.5% on US$4,000) | $60.00 |
| Account fees ($8.25 a month) | $99.00 |
| Total | $466.40 |
$466.40 is 1.30% of your assets — nearly double the advertised figure. And of the six lines, only one was ever presented to you as a fee.
The other five do not hide, they scatter. Commissions sit in your order history, the spread is folded into the execution price, conversion is multiplied into the rate, account fees leave your chequing account, and trading expenses are subtracted from the fund's value before you ever see it.
Yoseri's Investments page does that addition source by source. The six lines are kept apart, because only one of them is fixed by changing fund.
Your money, with no made-up numbers.
Accounts, budget, savings, debt and investments in one statement. Free with manual entry.