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are 10% annually and both are assumed fixed for 10 years (a big assumption), your total expected aggregated expenses on a $10,000 investment may be presented in a grid such as the following:

Sample Aggregated Fund Expense

These are, of course, best estimates based on fickle assumptions. Also they usually do not include other charges such as load charges or transaction fees. But they do provide you with some basic information on what may be deducted from your account given the fund's historical performance. By the way, in our example above your holding would grow to $23,695 at the end of the 10th year, barring any other expenses or taxes.

I close this section by mentioning two important facts about funds' expenses. First, no matter how the fund performs, you can expect deductions according to its expense ratio. Do not assume that the expense ratio does not apply if the fund goes negative. Rain or shine, you will have to foot the bill. Second, just because a fund has higher expenses than others, do not assume that it is somehow better than others. History has shown that index funds (which have lower expenses due to their passive management style) do just as well as most actively managed funds (which have higher expenses). In some cases, more expensive is just more expensive. …