How do insurance funds work?
"Sometimes 403b's contain annuities or other insurance related instruments.  I know that in many New York schools the local teacher unions administer the 403b plan, and sometimes choose proprietary investments like variable annuities or other insurance products. In New York the Attorney General sued and settled with the state teacher's union for their endorsement of a high cost ING 403b plan -- I believe the maintenance fees were in excess of 3%/year!  In a tax deferred plan like a 401k, 403b or 457 plan, the low risk ""insurance fund"" is generally a GIC ""Guaranteed Investment Contract"". A GIC (aka ""Stable Value Fund"") is sort of cross between a CD and a Money Market fund. It's used by insurance companies to raise short term capital. GICs usually yield a premium versus a money market and are a safe investment. If your wife is in a 403b with annuities or other life-insurance tie ins other than GICs, make sure that you understand the fee structure and ask lots of questions." "What is a 403b? A 403(b) plan is a tax-advantaged retirement savings plan available for public education organizations, some non-profit employers (only US Tax Code 501(c)(3) organizations), cooperative hospital service organizations and self-employed ministers in the United States. Kind of a rare thing. A bit more here: http://www.sec.gov/investor/pubs/teacheroptions.htm under investment options Equity Indexed Annuities are a special type of contract between you and an insurance company. During the accumulation period — when you make either a lump sum payment or a series of payments — the insurance company credits you with a return that is based on changes in an equity index, such as the S&P 500 Composite Stock Price Index. The insurance company typically guarantees a minimum return. Guaranteed minimum return rates vary. After the accumulation period, the insurance company will make periodic payments to you under the terms of your contract, unless you choose to receive your contract value in a lump sum. For more information, please see our ""Fast Answer"" on Equity Indexed Annuities, and read FINRA's investor alert entitled Equity-Indexed Annuitiies — A Complex Choice. So perhaps ""equity indexed annuities"" is the more correct thing to search for and not ""insurance funds""?"
"SIPC is a corporation - a legal entity separate from its owners. In the case of SIPC, it is funded through the fees paid by its members. All the US brokers are required to be members and to contribute to SIPC funds. Can it go bankrupt? Of course. Any legal entity can go bankrupt. A person can go bankrupt. A country can go bankrupt. And so can anything in between. However, looking at the history of things, there are certain assumptions that can be made. These are mere guesses, as there's no law about any of these things (to the best of my knowledge), but seeing how things were - we can try and guess that they will also be like this in the future. I would guess, that in case of a problem for the SIPC to meet its obligation, any of the following would happen (or combinations): Too big to fail - large insurance companies had been bailed out before by the governments since it was considered that their failure would be more destructive to the economy than the bailout. AIG as an example in the US. SIPC is in essence is an insurance company. So is Lloyd's of London. Breach of trust of the individual investors that can lead to a significant market crash. That's what happened in the US to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. They're now ""officially"" backed by the US government. If SIPC is incapable of meeting its obligation, I would definitely expect the US government to step in, even though there's no such obligation. Raising funds through charging other members. If the actuary calculations were incorrect, the insurance companies adjust them and raise premiums. That is what should happen in this case as well. While may not necessarily solve a cashflow issue, in the long term it will allow SIPC to balance, so that bridge loans (from the US government/Feds/public bonds) could be used in between. Not meeting obligations, i.e.: bankruptcy. That is an option, and insurance companies have gone bankrupt before. Not unheard of, but from the past experience - again, I'd expect the US government to step in. In general, I don't see any significant difference between SIPC in the US and a ""generic"" insurance coverage elsewhere. Except that in the US SIPC is mandatory, well regulated, and the coverage is uniform across brokerages, which is a benefit to the consumer." "A bond fund will typically own a range of bonds of various durations, in your specific fund: The fund holds high-quality long-term New York municipal bonds with an   average duration of approximately 6–10 years So through this fund you get to own a range of bonds and the fund price will behave similar to you owning the bonds directly.  The fund gives you a little diversification in terms of durations and typically a bit more liquidity.  It also may continuously buy bonds over time so you get some averaging vs. just buying a bond at a given time and holding it to maturity.  This last bit is important, over long durations the bond fund may perform quite differently than owning a bond to maturity due to this ongoing refresh.  Another thing to remember is that you're paying management fees for the fund's management. As with any bond investment, the longer the duration the more sensitive the price is to change in interest rates because when interest rates change the price will track it. (i.e. compare a change of 1% for a one year duration vs. 1% yearly over 10 years) If I'm correct, why would anyone in the U.S. buy a long-term bond fund   in a market like this one, where interest rates are practically   bottomed out? That is the multi-trillion dollar question.  Bond prices today reflect what ""people"" are willing to pay for them.  Those ""people"" include the Federal Reserve which through various programs (QE, Operate Twist etc.) has been forcing the interest rates to where they want to see them.  If no one believed the Fed would be able to keep interest rates where they want them then the prices would be different but given that investors know the Fed has access to an infinite supply of money it becomes a more difficult decision to bet against that.  (aka ""Don't fight the Fed"").  My personal belief is that rates will come up but I haven't been able to translate that belief into making money ;-)  This question is very complex and has to do not only with US policies and economy but with the status of the US currency in the world and the world economy in general.  The other saying that comes to mind in this context is that the market can remain irrational (and it certainly seems to be that) longer than you can remain solvent." Not to pick your words apart, but I'm used to the word laddering as used with CDs or bonds, where one buys a new say, 7 year duration each year with old money coming due and, in effect, is always earning the longer term rate, while still having new funds available each year.  So. The article you link suggests that there's money to be saved by not taking a long term policy on all the insurance you buy. They split $250K 30 year / $1M 20 year. The money saved by going short on the bigger policy is (they say) $11K.  It's an interesting idea. Will you use the $11K saved to buy a new $1M 10 year policy in 20 years, or will you not need the insurance? There are situations where insurance needs drop, e.g. 20 years into my marriage, college fully funded as are retirement accounts. I am semi-retired and if I passed, there's enough money. There are also situations where the need runs longer. The concept in the article works for the former type of circumstance. Not according to the SEC: A mutual fund is an SEC-registered open-end investment company that pools money from many investors and invests the money in stocks, bonds, short-term money-market instruments, other securities or assets, or some combination of these investments.  The combined securities and assets the mutual fund owns are known as its portfolio, which is managed by an SEC-registered investment adviser.  Each mutual fund share represents an investor’s proportionate ownership of the mutual fund’s portfolio and the income the portfolio generates.  And further down: Mutual funds are open-end funds. Defined benefit pension funds will typically target treasuries + a spread that depends on how well funded the plan is and the duration of the liabilities. So for example, if a DB fund is 90% funded (meaning assets are 90% of liabilities) and the liabilities have a duration of 20 years, they will target the 20 year treasury rate + a spread that will bring the plan to just over 100% funded in around 20 years. This spread will usually be much lower than 8% p.a. Obviously it's much more complicated than this, but hopefully this gives a general idea. "How does [FINRA's 5% markup policy]  (http://www.investopedia.com/study-guide/series-55/commissions-and-trade-complaints/finra-5-markup-policy/) affect the expense/profit/value of an ETF/Mutual Fund?  An extreme example to illustrate: If my fund buys 100 IBM @ 100, The fund would credit the broker $10,000 for those shares and the broker would give the fund 100 shares. Additionally there would be some sort of commission (say $10) paid on top of the transaction which would come out of the fund's expense ratio.  But the broker is ""allowed"" to charge a 5% markup. So that means, that $100 price that I see could have hit the tape at $95 (assume 5% markup which is allowed). Thus, assuming that the day had zero volatility for IBM,  when the fund gets priced at the end of the day, my 100 shares which ""cost"" 10,000 (plus $10) now has a market value of $9,500. Is that how it ""could"" work? That 500 isn't calculated as part of the expense of the fund is it? (how could it be, they don't know about the exact value of the markup)." TL;DR: Only term is pure insurance and is the cheapest.  The rest are mixtures of insurance and savings/investment.  Typically the mixtures are not as efficient as doing it yourself, except that there can be tax advantages as well as the ability to borrow from your policy in some cases. The issue is the time frame. With a one year investment horizon the only way for a fund manager to be confident that they are not going to lose their shirt is to invest your money in ultra conservative low volatility investments. Otherwise a year like 2008 in the US stock market would break them. Note if you are willing to expand your payback time period to multiple years then you are essentially looking at an annuity and it's market loss rider. Of course those contacts are always structured such that the insurance company is extremely confident that they will be able to make more in the market than they are promising to pay back (multiple decade time horizons). The fund should be reporting returns net of expenses, so your interpretation is right; it made something like 0.42% (which sounds plausible, based on current yields on short-term securities), and the 0.05% is what's left after expenses. I've never seen a regular mutual fund report raw returns before expenses.  If one does, the my personal opinion would be that they're trying to snooker you, as that number isn't actually representative of anybody's actual returns.   If you look carefully, you should be able to find a table that reports several kinds of adjusted returns for the fund: As to what happens if a fund can't earn enough returns to cover its expenses, in that case the value of the fund shares will decrease.  This happens from time to time with riskier funds.  It shouldn't happen with a money market fund because both the returns and the expenses are fairly predictable, so the fund managers should be able to avoid it, unless they get caught up in a major crisis like the 2008 banking crisis.  In ordinary times, a money market fund managers who couldn't keep expenses below income would find themselves looking for a new job fairly quickly. Finally, for what it's worth, 0.37% is a really high expense ratio for a money market fund.  If you were to shop around, you could easily find comparable funds with expenses less than half that. "What you are looking for is a pretty terrible deal for you, so I'd say it doesn't exist because there isn't a market for it, or nobody has noticed there is a market for it. In principle I would happily take the deal you offer from as many people as would let me, put the money into treasury bills, and take half the profits while doing pretty much nothing.    If I had more risk tolerance I would be pretty happy to have half the value of my ""fund"" as zero cost investment capital for more aggressive investments.  My business would then be a lot like an insurance company without the hassle of selling insurance to get hold of float to invest.  Also, most insurance companies actually lose money on policies, but come out ahead by investing the float, so an insurance company with zero cost float is quite a good business. Another answer mentions Berkshire Hathaway.  If you read one of the famous Berkshire Hathaway annual letters to shareholders and read the section about insurance you'll see that very low cost float has a large role in that company's success. So, back to your end of the deal: if the deal is that good for me, how good is it for you?  I'd have to double market returns just for you to break even.  If you're smart enough to pick a financial adviser that can beat the market by that much, how come you aren't able to pick an investment strategy that ties the market?" "The guideline for the size of an emergency fund is just a guideline.  I've usually heard it expressed as ""3 to 6 months,"" but everyone has a different idea of exactly how big it should be. The purpose of the fund is to give you enough cash to be able to pay for unexpected expenses that have come up that you have not budgeted for without you having to borrow money to pay for them. To figure out how big this fund should be, we look at the worst case scenario.  Suppose that you lost your job tomorrow.  What would you do? Cut your expenses.  You'd probably be much more careful how you spend money. Secure health insurance.  This would be done by either continuing your employer's policy with COBRA, or by purchasing your own insurance, likely through the Obamacare/ACA market.  Keep in mind that most likely your employer is paying for a portion of your insurance now, so this expense will go up quite a bit no matter which option you choose. Look for another job.  You'd probably begin your search for a new job immediately. The size of your emergency fund determines how long you will be able to go without income before you need to start a new job. Regarding cutting your expenses, it is up to you how much you would cut.  There are things that are easy to cut temporarily (or permanently), such as restaurants, entertainment expenses, vacations, etc.  You would probably stop retirement investing until you have income again.  The more you cut, the longer your emergency fund would last.  Things you don't want to cut are necessities, like housing, groceries, utilities, transportation, etc.  I would also include health insurance in this list.  Certainly, if you have a pre-existing condition, you do not want to let your health insurance coverage lapse. Your employability is also a factor.  If you believe that you would have an easy time finding similar employment to what you have now, your emergency fund might not need to be quite as big as someone who believes they would have a harder time finding another job." "Does the bolded sentence apply for ETFs and ETF companies? No, the value of an ETF is determined by an exchange and thus the value of the share is whatever the trading price is. Thus, the price of an ETF may go up or down just like other securities. Money market funds can be a bit different as the mutual fund company will typically step in to avoid ""Breaking the Buck"" that could happen as a failure for that kind of fund. To wit,   must ETF companies invest a dollar in the ETF for every dollar that an   investor deposited in this aforesaid ETF? No, because an ETF is traded as shares on the market, unless you are using the creation/redemption mechanism for the ETF, you are buying and selling shares like most retail investors I'd suspect. If you are using the creation/redemption system then there are baskets of other securities that are being swapped either for shares in the ETF or from shares in the ETF." Many mutual funds include such mechanisms. However, the higher fees for those funds (when compared to simple index funds) may cancel out any improvement the hedging strategy offers. Generally speaking, each year, mutual funds distribute to their shareholders the dividends that are earned by the stocks that they hold and also the net capital gains that they make when they sell stocks that they hold. If they did not do so, the money would be income to the fund and the fund would have to pay taxes on the amount not distributed.  (On the other hand, net capital losses are held by the fund and carried forward  to later years to offset future capital gains).  You pay taxes on the amounts of the distributions declared by the fund. Whether the fund sold a particular stock for a loss or a gain (and if so, how much) is not the issue; what the fund declares as its distribution is. This is why it is not a good idea to buy a mutual fund just before it makes a distribution; your share price drops by the per-share amount of the distribution, and you have to pay taxes on the distribution. I need to see the policy you are referring to give a more accurate answer. However what could be happening, it’s again the way these instruments are structured; For example if the insurance premium is say 11,000 of which 1000 is toward expenses and Term insurance amount. The Balance 10,000 is invested in growth. The promise is that this will grow max of 9.5% and never below zero. IE say if we are talking only about a year, you can get anything between 10,000 to 10,950.  The S & P long-term average return is in the range of 12 -15% [i don't remember correctly] So the company by capping it at 9.5% is on average basis making a profit of 2.5% to 5.5%. IE in a good year say the S & P return is around 18%, the company has pocketed close to 9% more money;   On a bad year say the Index gave a -ve return of say 5% ... The Insurance company would take this loss out of the good years. If say when your policy at the S & P for that year has given poor returns, you would automatically get less returns.  Typically one enters into Life Insurance on a long term horizon and hence the long term averages should be used as a better reference, and going by that, one would make more money just by investing this in an Index directly. As you whether you want to invest in such a scheme, should be your judgment, in my opinion I prefer to stay away from things that are not transparent.