Season 2, Episode 16: Don’t Be Fooled By Fancy-Sounding Funds

How index funds make more money in the long (and short) run than 99% of more expensive MBA-curated funds, even though they try to trick you with their "insider" status. They want you to pay more money for their bad bets. Don’t do it.

For our last episode of Season 2, we talk about, what else??: how index funds are the freaking work horses of building a financial future for good reason.

Caitlin grills Sara about a financial column she read that says what Sara has already been saying for two seasons (and 10 years before that): it’s VERY VERY hard to beat the returns you can get over long periods of time when you invest in low-cost index funds. Like so hard that it’s probably a fluke when it happens so don’t believe anyone who says they have the winning strategy or insider knowledge. They don’t. They can’t.

All of the studies for the past 20 years have shown this again and again.

So, forget about the finance bros and pinstriped Wall Street “kings” who pretend they can pick the winners with their fancy words and boring golf stories. While they strive for fantasy heroics, you’ll make more money than they will in the long term sticking to an fund strategy based on reality and research.

Also, Sara reminds us again how dangerous our own fear and greed buttons are to derail us from our deserved financial glory.

Oh! And do you have a passive income story? A success? A failure? Tell us about it in a voice memo and e-mail it to: womenonthevergepodcast@gmail.com

Ask us your dumb investing and finance questions for Season 3 on our Ask Us page!

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This episode was edited by our co-producer Kelly West. Music by Bad Bad Hats and Devmo.