Earn more and spend less on investment expenses (explicit & non-explicit)!

Similar to the concept of "Save more and spend less on your income", a person should also ensure that he/she "Earn more and spend less on investment expenses"! This is also another very important concept to make more money! This is why I hate to invest in Unit Trusts / Mutual Funds and investment-linked insurance policies! These types of investment instrument have very high expenses (they are non-explicit, charged to the account and you don't see them!). Just give you an example, a unit trust (UT) manager is able to earn market returns of say 8% a year over 10 years. However, the management expenses come out to be about 3% a year (yes, that is the kind of UT expenses you are looking at in Singapore!). Therefore, your actual net return is only 5% per year. To see the significance, I assume you put in $240,450 into the Unit Trust for 10 years (let's just make the figure about the same as what you will get at 65 years old when you contributed CPF minimum sum of $155,000 at 55 years old): At 8% compounded return a year, at the end of 10 years, you should get back $344,044. At 5% compounded return a year, at the end of 10 years, you should get back $255,286. So, the 3% annual management expenses actually costs you to lose $88,758, which is almost (88,758/155,000) = 57.3% of your original capital!