A vampire wouldn’t drain you as much as some investment managers

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of 10X Investments.

It’s Halloween month. There are pumpkins and masks and costumes and candles and everything in the shops already.

Next, we’ll be inundated with Boney M’s Little Drummer Boy. And then the rest of their Christmas with Boney M album. What’s a Boney M anyway?

Anyway, I am not a big fan of Halloween. Are you? I see it as a commercial import from the US that retailers turned into a big thing just so they could make money off fake pumpkins. Halloween, Valentines’ day, Black Friday, Christmas… all blur together in a capitalistic retail orgy that would have Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman looking at each other funny.

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Sorry, that got weirdly dark.

Ok getting back to the point I wanted to make and in the interests of full disclosure: I’ve recently made the decision to transfer my savings to 10X, because I felt like my investment growth was being eaten alive by a fees monster. It’s like my portfolio was possessed by invisible fees. The ghost of industry hubris past.

Ok enough of that. Let’s look at exactly why I made this decision.

A nightmare on Wall Street… and every street

So in case I wasn’t clear before, I think Halloween is all a massive marketing gimmick akin to putting the chocolates and sweets (them again) right by the till points. A trick my not-so-little, little person recognised from about four-years-old.

Obviously, the whole point of this is to part me from my hard-earned money. Likewise the fees on retirement investments.

First off, it was only when I floated switching investment managers that I heard from my financial advisor. Turns out, I am now worth much more than I was when I last saw her (Yay!). But, what did she do to get me there exactly?

What I now understand is that I was paying someone to tell me about other people who move money around. My person tells me these other people watch the market and take a long-term view and change asset classes and a whole bunch of other things I’m not supposed to be able to understand. But then I thought about it a bit, and I did understand. First, that a small difference in fees can make a huge difference. And second, that one way to minimise those fees was not to pay that person to tell me things I can actually understand.

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The company I am moving from is what is known as an active asset manager. These people aim to outperform a benchmark index by selling or buying. There’s a lot of research and analysis involved.

Essentially, I paid an advisor to decide which provider and fund, and then I paid the provider to decide on the asset mix that went into that fund. I was paying close to 3% in fees for all that, actually. But what if exorcising the fee ghost by removing the advisor and finding a more cost-effective provider could bring fees down to below 1%? What then?

Chopping fees like Freddie Kreuger

And here’s the really scary thing. Scarier than any ghost, real or made out of a bedsheet and demanding sweets at my front door:

Let’s say, theoretically, I invested R100,000 four decades ago at an active manager and a manager that uses index-tracking to gain efficiencies and reduce investment risk. Both get 6% annual return before fees (I’m not accounting for inflation in this calculation).

With 1% in fees, my R100,000 becomes R704,000 over 40 years.

But at 3% fees, I'd only have R326,000.

There’s a comparison graph here.

That R378,000 difference is the real Halloween horror. It's money I worked for, disappearing not into investments, but into layers of fees.

Do yourself a favour, and check your Effective Annual Cost. That'll tell you whether your portfolio is Dr Jekyll or My Hyde.