Time for a New Pickup?

This summer has been a rough one for my old pickup. In early May, as the thermometer starting rising, my air conditioner went kaput. That cost me about $600 to make the repairs. Then, last week, alarm bells starting ringing and a red light shaped like a battery flashed on the dash. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a relatively affordable battery that needed replacing. Rather, it was a much more expensive alternator. After forking out another $500, the thought crossed my mind that it may be time to look for some new wheels.

New vehicles are probably the worst “investments” we make. It is not unusual to see the value decline by 50% in the first four years after driving off the dealer’s lot. That knowledge has led me to adopt a philosophy that I will drive our cars and trucks until “the wheels fall off” before buying a new one. As my unexpected repair expenses have accumulated though, some reminders of how expensive new cars can be helped to scratch that new car (or truck) itch.

I started with a quick visit to Kelley Blue Book® to see roughly what a new 2017 Ford F150 Platinum edition (the same model of my current pickup) would cost. $53,383 was the “Fair Purchase Price” that was indicated. Ouch, that was about all I needed to realize I am probably doing the right thing by continuing to drive my old pickup a while longer. But I can’t write an Accountable Update without analyzing it further, so I started checking out the values of older models, too.

I saw that a used 2013 model in good condition has a trade-in value around $26,000, which would be a pretty good indication of its actual value. Compared to the new price of $46,100 back in 2013, according to an article I found on Autotrader.com, it looks like the value has fallen just under half over the last four years. Of course, when you add in the approximate $3,400 of tax, title, and license costs in Texas (per this calculator on Carmax.com), plus whatever else you let the F&I guy talk you into at the dealership, and a 50% decrease per presidential term appears to be a good estimate.

That translates to a -15.91% annual rate of return. Put in dollar terms, a new $53,383 pickup would drop the following amounts over the next ten years assuming annual depreciation at that rate:

Depreciation Illustration

$53,383 pickup with annual depreciation of -15.91%.

In the first three years, that’s a total of $21,641 of lost value versus only $12,868 over the next three. If you put 12,000 miles a year on the vehicle in this example, the depreciation cost per mile is 60.11 cents in the first three years versus 35.74 cents for the next three.* Consider that the IRS mileage rate in 2017 for business is only 53.5 cents per mile. You could also supplement your income by driving for Uber, but their base mileage rate starts at $1.06 per mile, and you would still need to buy gas! 

Remember that commercial that showed a guy driving an old car that spit change out of the air conditioning ducts? Driving a new car is like that, but exactly the opposite.

Some potential good news, especially if you are in the market for a new car, is that “…millions (of) cars that were leased two or three years ago, many of them used compact and midsized cars with low mileage, are heading toward auction lots and used car dealerships. That surge in supply threatens to depress prices for new and used vehicles…”, according to an Autonews.com article from earlier this month.

Some may be asking if a lease may make more sense than buying, but the lease amount incorporates the expected depreciation, taxes, and interest into the payment. At the end of the lease, you would then start the whole process over again, insuring that you are always paying the highest amount of depreciation. Plus you typically add in mileage penalties and wear and tear charges. 

There is nothing quite like that new car smell, except that you may find adding to your retirement account, the kids’ college, or travel funds are even sweeter. You can certainly reduce the amount of depreciation each year by driving a new vehicle longer, but buying the used pickup in the example above would mean you could add an extra $3,000 per year towards goals that may make you a lot happier.

If you would like to discuss any of those plans, get in touch.

If you are in the market for a car, it looks like your timing could be pretty good. As for me, I think I’ll stick with my old pickup for bit longer.

*Arithmetic error corrected from earlier version 

Quick Announcement

I'm taking a break from the Accountable Update this week due to a travel conflict, but I do have an announcement to share. Taigon Chen is the newest addition to the team at ATX Portfolio Advisors, beginning this week as my first intern.

Taigon is a sophomore at the University of Texas, majoring in Aerospace Engineering and Business Administration. He is from Sugarland where he was Valedictorian of William B. Travis High School. In his spare time, he enjoys trading stocks, designing and building airplanes and computers, and playing the guitar. 

Taigon will be focused on learning about investments and financial planning, as well as some of the technology and operational aspects of the business. Please join me in welcoming Taigon!

Getting What You Don’t Pay For

Please consider the investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses carefully before investing in Mutual Funds. The prospectus, which contains this and other information about the investment company, can be obtained directly from the Fund Company or your financial professional. Be sure to read the prospectus carefully before deciding whether to invest.

Does that sound familiar? If you scroll to the bottom of this webpage, you will see this common language encouraging you to read the prospectus of any mutual fund you are considering for purchase. But even if you heed the call to read this legally required disclosure, you probably aren't seeing the whole picture.

For example, did you know that funds also produce another document that discloses how much the fund pays in trading commissions? Those expenses are not included in the fund's expense ratio and are typically expressed as a dollar amount on a financial statement that can be found in the Statement of Additional Information (SAI).

This is just one example of the type of diligence that you, or an advisor on your behalf, should be conducting when considering the inclusion of mutual funds and Exchange Traded Funds(ETFs) in your portfolio. Funds and ETFs are required to produce these disclosures in prescribed formats. Throw in holdings reports, typically produced semi-annually but sometimes more frequently, and you have the information you need to start making informed decisions.

This week I share the July 2017 Issue Brief from DFA titled Getting What You Don't Pay For. It provides a quick insight into why the information found in documents such as prospectuses and SAIs matters. Enjoy the short read and have a great weekend!

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Getting What You Don’t Pay For

Costs matter. Whether you’re buying a car or selecting an investment strategy, the costs you expect to pay are likely to be an important factor in making any major financial decision.

People rely on a lot of different information about costs to help inform these decisions. When you buy a car, for example, the sticker price tells you approximately how much you can expect to pay for the car itself. But the sticker price is only one part of the overall cost of owning a car. Other things like sales tax, the cost of insurance, expected routine maintenance costs, and the potential cost of unexpected repairs are also important to understand. Some of these costs are easily observed, and others are more difficult to assess. Similarly, when investing in mutual funds, different variables need to be considered to evaluate how cost‑effective a strategy may be for a particular investor.

Expense Ratios

Many types of costs lower the net return available to investors. One important cost is the expense ratio. Similar to the sticker price of a car, the expense ratio tells you a lot about what you can expect to pay for an investment strategy. Exhibit 1 helps illustrate why expense ratios are important and shows how hefty expense ratios can impact performance.

This data shows that funds with higher average expense ratios had lower rates of outperformance. For the 15-year period through 2016, only 9% of the highest-cost equity funds outperformed their benchmarks. This data indicates that a high expense ratio is often a challenging hurdle for funds to overcome, especially over longer horizons. From the investor’s point of view, an expense ratio of 0.25% vs. 0.75% means savings of $5,000 per year on a $1 million account. As Exhibit 2 helps to illustrate, those dollars can really add up over longer periods.

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Exhibit 1.       High Costs Can Reduce Performance, Equity Fund Winners and Losers Based on Expense Ratios (%)

Exhibit 2.       Hypothetical Growth of $1 Million at 6%, Less Expenses

The sample includes funds at the beginning of the 15-year period ending December 31, 2016. Funds are sorted into quartiles within their category based on average expense ratio over the sample period. The chart shows the percentage of winner and loser funds by expense ratio quartile; winners are funds that survived and outperformed their respective Morningstar category benchmark, and losers are funds that either did not survive or did not outperform their respective Morningstar category benchmark. US-domiciled open-end mutual fund data is from Morningstar and Center for Research in Security Prices (CRSP) from the University of Chicago. Equity fund sample includes the Morningstar historical categories: Diversified Emerging Markets, Europe Stock, Foreign Large Blend, Foreign Large Growth, Foreign Large Value, Foreign Small/Mid Blend, Foreign Small/Mid Growth, Foreign Small/Mid Value, Japan Stock, Large Blend, Large Growth, Large Value, Mid-Cap Blend, Mid-Cap Value, Miscellaneous Region, Pacific/Asia ex-Japan Stock, Small Blend, Small Growth, Small Value, and World Stock. For additional information regarding the Morningstar historical categories, please see “The Morningstar Category Classifications” at morningstardirect.morningstar.com/clientcomm/Morningstar_Categories_US_April_2016.pdf. Index funds and fund-of-funds are excluded from the sample. The return, expense ratio, and turnover for funds with multiple share classes are taken as the asset-weighted average of the individual share class observations. For additional methodology, please refer to Dimensional Fund Advisor’s brochure, The 2017 Mutual Fund Landscape. Past performance is no guarantee of future results.

For illustrative purposes only and not representative of an actual investment. This hypothetical illustration is intended to show the potential impact of higher expense ratios and does not represent any investor’s actual experience. Assumes a starting account balance of $1,000,000 and a 6% compound annual growth rate less expense ratios of 0.25% and 0.75% applied over a 15-year time horizon. Taxes and other potential costs are not reflected. Actual results may vary significantly. Changing the assumptions would result in different outcomes. For example, the savings and difference between the ending account balances would be lower if the starting investment amount was lower.

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While the expense ratio is an important piece of information for an investor to evaluate, what matters most when gauging the true cost‑effectiveness of an investment strategy is the “total cost of ownership.” Similar to the car example, total cost of ownership is more holistic than any one figure. It looks at things that are readily observable, like expense ratios, but also at things that are more difficult to assess, like trading costs and tax impact. It is important for investors to be aware of these and other costs and to realize that an expense ratio, while useful, is not an all‑inclusive metric for total cost of ownership.

Trading Costs

For example, while an expense ratio includes the fund’s investment management fee and expenses for fund accounting and shareholder reporting (among other items), it doesn’t include the potentially substantial cost of trading securities within the fund. Overall trading costs are a function of the amount of trading, or turnover, and the cost of each trade. If a manager trades excessively, costs like commissions and the price impact from trading can eat away at returns. Viewed through the lens of our car analogy, this impact is similar to excessively jamming your brakes or accelerating quickly. By regularly demanding immediacy like this when it may not be necessary, the more wear and tear your car is likely to experience and the more fuel you will end up using. These actions can increase your total cost of ownership. Additionally, excessive trading can also lead to negative tax consequences for the fund, which can increase the cost of ownership for investors holding funds in taxable accounts. The best way to try to decrease the impact of trading costs is for funds to avoid trading excessively and pay close attention to effectively minimizing cost per trade. Employing a flexible investment approach that reduces the need for immediacy, thereby enabling opportunistic execution, is one way to potentially help accomplish this goal. Keeping turnover low, remaining flexible, and transacting only when the potential benefits of a trade outweigh the costs can help keep overall trading costs down and help reduce the total cost of ownership.

Conclusion

The total cost of ownership of a mutual fund can be difficult to assess and requires a thorough understanding of costs beyond what an expense ratio can tell investors on its own. A good advisor can help investors look beyond any one cost metric and instead evaluate the total cost of ownership of an investment program—and ultimately help clients decide if a given strategy is right for them.

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Source: Dimensional Fund Advisors LP.

There is no guarantee investment strategies will be successful. Diversification does not eliminate the risk of market loss. Mutual fund investment values will fluctuate and shares, when redeemed, may be worth more or less than original cost. The types of fees and expenses will vary based on investment vehicle. Investments are subject to risk including possible loss of principal.

All expressions of opinion are subject to change. This article is distributed for informational purposes, and it is not to be construed as an offer, solicitation, recommendation, or endorsement of any particular security, products, or services.