Podcast Episode - Is This The Start of a Bear Market?

Suze starts out by recapping the markets this week and if we are at the start of a Bear market.  Then, we go to Suze School for a lesson about why you should avoid target date mutual funds and what the better investing option may be, for you.

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Podcast Transcript:

Suze: September 7th, 2025. Welcome everybody to the Women and Money podcast, as well as everybody smart enough to listen. Suze O here, and today is Suze School. But before I tell you about Suze School, tomorrow is September 8th. Did you know that? Of course you did. But did you also know that tomorrow, 15 years ago, Miss Travis and I got married in South Africa. So we will be celebrating our 15th wedding anniversary, and you may be thinking, but Suze, gay marriage wasn't legal in 2010. Oh, it most certainly was in South Africa, and we happened to be there. I was speaking there, and we decided, let's just get married. And it wasn't until five years later, really, that in the United States marriage equality came to be. But it is also possible, if we are not diligent, everybody, marriage equality in the United States may disappear. So do not take anything for granted.

So now, before I go into Suze School, just want to make a few comments on these markets. Yes, they are volatile. They are going up. They are going down, and I will be the first to tell you that many of you most likely are going to get scared. And why? Because these are scary times and these markets can absolutely go down. They could go down another 10%. Why? Because of the tariffs, we don't know about them still, all the lawsuits that are happening in the United States of America, the possibility of a government shutdown, what's going on with Gaza, with Ukraine — there are many scary things happening out there.

So, of course, you possibly could be reading the headlines and going, oh my God, we're in another bubble, everything's going to just crash. And will it, will it not? I don't think so, but I do think it is possible that between now and maybe even the end of the year, who knows, that these markets could go down.

However, it is not unusual — like with the internet bubble, and we're not in a bubble right now, believe it or not — but I am begging you for you to know that this near-term volatility that we're all going to experience, that's ahead of us, is essentially a buying opportunity, and it is not the start of a bear market. Do you hear me?

And that the truth of the matter is, all right, so maybe we won't end the year at 7,000. Maybe we're gonna end it with the S&P at around 6500. OK. But I can tell you, in my opinion, in 2026 we're really going to see AI be adopted everywhere — just everywhere.

You know, technologically speaking, we're far advanced, really, if you think about it, than we were in the 90s when the internet was just coming about. All of us now on some level do ChatGPT. We're aware of all of this. Google, everything — it's all AI.

So it's just started to be adopted, and very shortly, especially starting next year, we're going to see it be bigger and better, in my opinion, than anything that happened with the internet. So I'm just going to repeat right now: don't be afraid of volatility. Make sure you keep cash on the sidelines. If things go down — opportunity to buy. But this is not, this is not the start of another market in my opinion. OK, just think about that.

All right. Are you ready for Suze School? Let's take out your Suze notebooks because today I'm gonna have some numbers for you so you can compare.

A little bit ago, actually on August 29th, somebody by the name of Dr. E wrote in, and this is what he said — because at the end of his email he says one of the men smart enough to listen. He says, "Dear Suze and KT, I recently noticed that my husband's workplace retirement account is committing highway robbery when it comes to fees."

Now, the reason that I've chosen this to do a Suze School out of it is that there are many of you out there that have a 401k, a 403b, a TSP plan at work. And do you know the fees that your employer is charging within your 401k plan by the mutual fund that they've allowed you to choose? And you need to know because here's an example of it.

There are very few funds, he says, to be chosen from, and the lesser evil in the group is AANTX, which, by the way, everybody, stands for the American 2060 Target Date Retirement Fund Class A. Now before I even go on, you know I don't like target date retirement funds, and I'm going to show you why in just a few seconds, OK.

The group AANTX charges a 5.75% load on the front end and has an expense ratio of 0.73%. Can you all write that down? A front-end load of 5.75% and an annual expense ratio of 0.73%.

He says this seems insane to me and may be even unethical. His employer only does a 3% match anyway. Is it worth it given the exorbitant fees, or should we just stick with the Roth, on principle, instead of paying those crazy fees?

Now just to answer Dr. E quickly: no, just keep investing up to the point of the match, and that's it — not a penny more, because it's still free money.

So here's what I first want to teach you in the Suze School. And I haven't taught this in a long time only because I thought for sure everybody would know about it and that people really wouldn't put people in loaded mutual funds anymore. They just don't make sense.

So first of all, remember the 5.75% load that his husband had to pay. Imagine now — write this down — that you invested $10,000. That's all. And there was a 5.75% load which goes to who? The broker who sold you the funds. Now what does that broker, financial person, the advisor, have to do with the performance of that fund? Absolutely nothing.

It's like, for instance, you go and you buy a car and a person selling you that car makes a commission for doing so. Now the question becomes, what does that person have to do with the performance of that car? And the answer to that question is absolutely nothing. They're just selling it to you. Same thing with a financial advisor. If you buy a loaded fund — now number one, how do you know if it's loaded? It has the letter A or B on the back of its name. So in this case, the American 2060 Target Date Retirement Fund Class A means that upfront they immediately take out 5.75% to pay the financial salesperson that sold you this fund.

All right, now what does that mean to you? Let's go back to where I started. Let's just say you put in $10,000 in one lump sum in this fund. The 5.75% of the amount that you put in comes to $575. All right, so let's just say on Monday you decide you want to buy that fund. You buy that fund and OK, everything's all right, but the next day you've heard this podcast and you go, I want to sell that fund. And if that fund has not moved one penny — it's exactly the same price as it was the day before — you would get back only $9,425. Why? Because $575 went, like I said, to pay the financial advisor.

You have to think about this. This fund has to go up at least five and three quarters percent just for you to break even. So you are already down 5.75% on your money the second that you buy this particular fund that has this load.

If you simply bought a fund known as a no-load fund, it doesn't charge you to buy it, doesn't charge you to sell it. If you bought it for $10,000 and you decided that you wanted to sell it the next day and it didn't change in price, you would get all $10,000 back.

There's also something known as another type of loaded mutual fund called B shares. And B shares simply are — they sell it to you under the pretense that there isn't a load, but there is. It's probably 5.75% as well. Not only is there a load, but there's also something called a 12b-1 fee. And it's actually more expensive in the long run than A share funds, so you have to know how these things work.

Personally, I would never, ever, ever buy a B share fund. So if some financial advisor says, Hey, I have this mutual fund, it's not gonna cost you anything, and they give you the name and it has the letter B at the end of it — just get out of there. Don't do it. Don't do it. Don't do it.

Now, that was one problem with what Dr. E is talking about here — the load. So lesson one: do not buy a loaded mutual fund. If you're going to buy a mutual fund, simply buy a no-load fund where there's no fee to buy or a fee to sell.

However, I just want to put in a caveat here. You can buy a mutual fund or you can buy an exchange-traded fund. I personally, as you know if you've been listening, like exchange-traded funds far better than mutual funds. And why is that? Because mutual funds can only be bought or sold at the end of the business day. An exchange-traded fund, which is identical in its holdings to a mutual fund, can be sold any time while the market is open. So I just want you to know that. However, in 401ks, in retirement accounts, chances are you're only offered mutual funds.

The expense ratio in this particular fund is 0.73%. Now that doesn't seem like a whole lot of money, but I'm going to show you in a second how much it really is. Now, why is there an expense ratio? An expense ratio simply pays the expenses, so to speak, of that fund to keep it running.

Because all funds — and ETFs, by the way — have what's known as a portfolio manager. And that is like, let's go back to the car example for a second. That is like the mechanic that fixes your car, that keeps it running smoothly — and of course, you have to pay him or her, right? That is what the expense ratio is in a mutual fund or an ETF. The manager who's managing that fund gets paid to do so.

In this particular fund, like I said, it's 0.73%. Now just put a pin in all of that for a second.

Over all the years that I've been doing this, I've said to you, I don't like target date retirement funds. And a lot of you go, "Why is that, Suze? It's so easy. I deposit my money and I never have to think about it again." Bingo. Do not be a lazy investor. Do not just say, "Oh, this'll be easy, and I'm through with it." You have worked hard for your money. You have to make sure that your money works hard for you, and just putting it in a target date retirement account, in most cases, makes no sense. Why?

You don't invest according to age, everybody. You invest according to what's happening in the economy. So do you want all your money in the stock market if the economy is going down, down, down — everything's just going to whatever? No, not necessarily. Maybe you want more in bonds, especially if you know that interest rates are high and they're going to come down. There's times for bonds. There's times for equity. There's times for everything. But that's dictated by what's happening in the economy.

And just because you're older, depending on your own financial circumstances, doesn't mean that therefore all the money in your retirement account should be in bonds. And that's possibly what would happen to you if you put the money in a target date retirement account, because as you get older to that date, they take you out of the stock market and put you more and more and more into bonds.

And do you really need to be in bonds? Or do you need to be in stocks? Does it matter? And it does — but it depends on your individual circumstances. Dr. E's husband is probably only 30 years old because he happened to choose an American 2060 Target Date Fund, which is what his projected retirement date is in his head, which is 35 years from now. So he's probably about 30 years of age, so that means we have 35 years that this money may be in this fund.

Let's just first look at, going back five years — that's all, just five years — what was the average annual rate of return for the AANTX, the target date fund, versus the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund. This is just going back five years, OK?

The American fund that you're paying that 0.73% expense ratio for — and the load — averaged about 10.5 to 11%. The Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund, on the other hand, averaged over the last five years 15%.

Now again, I want you to think about that. That would have been quite a bit of money difference. Now let's compare apples to apples, all right? Let's just assume you put in $100,000. That's all. You never put in any more money, and you did it for 35 years. OK, so they both did the exact same gross return of 10%. Let's say that is true.

Do you know over 35 years that the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund with an expense ratio of 0.04%, you would have $2,775,000. Not bad. That's what your $100,000 would have grown to.

But the American Fund, at the expense ratio — remember, the return of 10% is identical — because of the expense ratio of 0.73%, you would have only $2,226,000. That is approximately a $500,000 to $600,000 difference simply because of why? Not the performance of the fund, but the expense ratio.

So don't go telling me that a little expense ratio difference — in this case, 0.04% versus 0.73% — doesn't make a difference. It matters big time.

And just so you know, as time goes on, obviously the American funds probably won't be returning as much as the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund. But just let's assume over the next 35 years they return the average of about 10 to 11%, versus the 15 to 16%. Let's do one more example for you.

Let's say you put in $100,000 and the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund averaged about 15% for the next 35 years, versus the American funds which averaged about 10% for the next 35 years.

Do you know 35 years from now you would have approximately $13,300,000 in the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund versus about $2,800,000 in the target date mutual fund? That's about an $11 million difference.

Now I'm not saying that would actually happen. But it's possible. Because as you're getting older, that Target Date Fund is getting more and more conservative.

So, are you all understanding why I don't like Target Date Mutual Funds, number one? And why an expense ratio really, really matters? If you can put those two things together with every single investment you make — that you ask the question before you buy something, "Hey, is there a commission on this? Is there a load on this? Hey, what's the expense ratio?" — and just look at it and compare it to what the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund has done over the past five years or so in comparison to what you're about to buy, I think the numbers will tell you what you should and should not be doing.

And that is your Suze School for today. So there's only one thing that I want you to remember when it comes to your money, and it is this: people first, then money, then things. Now you stay safe and secure. Bye-bye now.