<prompt> Human: I 26M have 20K in IRAs Traditional and Roth at Northwestern Mutual and Ive had the accounts for 2.5 years. I opened this account after some guy I sort of knew from college cold called me one day. They pushed Whole Life Insurance hard but I only opened a Roth with them. The traditional IRA was a retirement account transfer when I changed jobs.Anyway, for the Roth IRA my strategy is put money in each month and forget about it. I recently subscribed to this subreddit and started looking into account fees and found that the mutual funds Im invested in through Northwestern averaged 1. I asked my POC from Northwestern what the total expense ratio is for my accounts and he told me its 2. Which apparently is outright thievery according to the wiki.Also these are apparently B class shares which means I cant move these funds anywhere for another 5 years without surrendering 5 of the value.---So my two options are Move the funds to Vanguard immediately and pay 1000 in charges 5 back end sales charge Pay 2 in fees per year for 5 years until the surrender sales charge goes away which would be 2000 in fees---I asked the guy what at Northwestern Mutual justifies paying a 2 expense ratio and he said The advantage of what you have is the option to annuitize the funds while in retirementand The current portfolio is a well diversified one, is actively managed for you rebalanced on your behalf.---Is there any reason not to end my relationship with Northwestern immediately and transfer my IRAs to Vanguard? Is he full of shit? Have I been had? Do I take the 1000 hit as a lesson learned?Appreciate your input.  <response>: Better to bail now and take a small hit than to wait 5 years and take a medium one, or wait until retirement and take a huge one. I would take the 5 penalty. Be sure you roll over your account, not withdraw. Otherwise youll take another 10 penalty. Vanguard can handle them entire process of rolling over on their end, theyll just need your account information.Expense rations arent inherently bad. Theyre a cost of doing business. I have some 1 ER funds in my portfolio. Heres the thing though, actively managed or well balanced isnt inherently good. If a fund beats the stock market by 0.5 but you pay 2, its a losing game. So your awesome diverse active-passive fund has to be getting about 9 returns each year to be worth it. And thats not just over the last 5 years. That needs to account for the major dips on 2000 and 2008 as well. Are they? The average fund is not.You mentioned you want to be a passive investor, just throwing money into an account and letting it grow in its own. That style of investment never warrants load fees or more than 0.5 ER. Anything higher really relies on an active investment style to make it work. And thats generally active on your end, not theirs. An actively managed fund rarely takes high enough risks on their own to be worth their costs. 