Investing isn't free. But here's why 20% of investors think it is

cnbc.com:

Death and taxes are, as Benjamin Franklin famously declared, two of life's certainties.

Investment fees may be a worthy addition to that list in the modern era — though not all investors are aware of this near-universal fact.

The fees financial services firms charge can be murky.

One-fifth of consumers think their investment services are free of cost, according to a recent Hearts & Wallets survey of about 6,000 U.S. households. Another 36% reported not knowing their fees.

A separate poll conducted by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority Investor Education Foundation similarly found that 21% of people believe they don't pay any fees to invest in non-retirement accounts. That share is up from 14% in 2018, the last time FINRA issued the survey.

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The broad ecosystem of financial services companies doesn't work for free. These firms — whether an investment fund or financial advisor, for example — generally levy investment fees of some kind.

Those fees may largely be invisible to the average person. Firms disclose their fees in fine print but generally don't ask customers to write a check or debit money from their checking accounts each month, as non-financial firms might do for a subscription or utility payment.

Instead, they withdraw money behind the scenes from a customer's investment assets — charges that can easily go unnoticed.

«It's relatively frictionless,» said Christine Benz, director of personal finance at Morningstar. «We're not conducting a transaction to pay for those services.»

«And that makes you much less