Singletary: Getting a grasp on mutual funds

But do you really understand how mutual funds work? Do you know what you’re paying in fees — and how those fees impact your nest egg?

I’m not asking these questions to make you feel dumb. I’m asking because not knowing how your 401(k) works could be detrimental to your financial health.

We hear all the time that information is power. But it’s really the right information that is powerful. So this month, the Color of Money Book Club pick is “Empire of the Fund: The Way We Save Now” by William Birdthistle, a professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law.

I belong to another book club — we call it “Color Me Read” — and Birdthistle’s book was a recent selection. His explanation of mutual funds was a hit with the group because it made us all confront the reality that we don’t know as much as we should.

Birdthistle does a masterful job of explaining mutual funds by using a number of metaphors from cars to baseball to balloons. And he’s funny. Several times I laughed out loud. Mostly however, I was scared.

The book opens with this terrifying analysis: “Over the past 30 years, America has embarked on a grand experiment — perhaps the richest and riskiest in our financial history — to change the way we save money. The hypothesis of our experiment is that millions of ordinary, untrained and busy citizens can successfully manage trillions of dollars in a financial system dominated by wealthy, skilled and powerful investment firms — firms that on many occasions have treated investors shabbily.”

Just one paragraph in and you might want to throw up your hands in defeat. But don’t.

You can’t afford to just say the system is rigged and bow out. Your protection is understanding the “structural vulnerabilities” of mutual funds.

Birdthistle makes some bold recommendations. He advocates universal access to the federal government’s version of a 401(k), called the “Thrift Savings Plan.”

“The plan is modest, prudent and incredibly cheap,” he writes.

And because we are amateur investors, Birdthistle says we really should test people before they’re allowed to invest in tax-advantaged retirement accounts.

Think of it in terms of learning to drive, he says. To get behind the wheel, you first need a license. To get that license, you have to be tested.

“Licenses act as implicit warnings: What you are about to do is dangerous,” he writes.

I’m not sure about the testing part, but I agree that financial literacy is frighteningly lacking among investors. As Birdthistle concludes, “The way we save now is almost certainly going to ensure we will not have enough in the future. We must as individuals financially educate ourselves.”

As a society, if a lot of people get investing for their retirement wrong, it becomes a huge and expensive public problem.

I’ll be hosting a chat about “Empire of the Fund” at noon Eastern on Dec. 8 at washingtonpost.com/discussions. Birdthistle will join me to answer your mutual-fund questions.

Michelle Singletary welcomes comments and column ideas. Reach her in care of The Washington Post, 1150 15th St. N.W., Washington, DC 20071; or singletarym@washpost.com.