Slicing Fees

Talking Real Money - Investing Talk

Don McDonald

Education, Business, Investing, How To

4.5 • 811 Ratings

🗓️ 26 February 2026

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Vanguard slashes fees again, pushing its average expense ratio down to six basis points. Don and Tom contrast that with outrageously expensive ETFs charging 2% to 14% annually, walk through why evidence-based factor funds cost a bit more than pure index funds, answer listener questions about international tilts and fund-of-funds rebalancing, and clarify why diversification across assets still matters more than fee-chasing alone. 0:04 Vanguard cuts fees again — average expense ratio now 0.06%...

Transcript

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0:00.0	Reality Radio for a really great future.
0:08.0	We're talking real money.
0:10.5	How low can they go?
0:13.3	How low can they go?
0:15.4	How low can they go?
0:17.7	How low can fees go?
0:19.9	Who's the lowest fee mutual fund and ETF company in the world?
0:24.7	You know the answer. Vanguard. Their fees are ridiculously low. So what is Vanguard doing this month?
0:32.4	What did they do this month? Well, they lowered the fees again on like a quarter of their funds, and now their
0:41.2	average fee at Vanguard. Their average fee across their managed and their index funds is six
0:50.4	one hundredths of one percent or six basis points that is six cents on every hundred
0:55.8	dollars invested wow you imagine what other people in the industry that are trying to run
1:01.5	exchange traded funds must think of them must hate them because like wait god we're not
1:05.7	going to make any money how can we make money it's six cents on a hundred hi everybody welcome
1:10.8	to talking real money the podcast where we talk about, guess what?
1:15.2	I want you to guess.
1:16.3	You guessed on the Vanguard thing.
1:18.0	What do we talk about on talking real money?
1:21.5	Soccer?
1:23.7	It's in the name.
1:25.3	Aviation?
1:26.3	We talk about money. World War II?
	...

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