Reading through the fine print regarding the fees of my new Fidelity retirement fund, I came across this paragraph which made me chuckle. (I love the fine print and am a very close reader of it, especially when it has anything to do with fees. As Tom Waits famously sang, “What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away.”)

“At each month end, Fidelity will perform a calculation with respect to your account holdings, subtracting the Agreed Management Fee Rate in the table above from the calculated Effective Management Fee Rate. The calculated month-end difference between the Effective Management Fee Rate and the Agreed Management Fee Rate will be multiplied by the month-end value of the account holdings then multiplied by the numbers of days in such month and such product divided by the numbers of days in the calendar year. The total of such amounts for each Constituent Funds is a ‘Loyalty Bonus’, accrued monthly and payable quarterly to each account in the form of additional units of each Constituent Fund in accordance with each account holder’s current investment allocation. Please note that there are differences in the method and frequency for accrual and payment of the Management Fee and Loyalty Bonus.”

Such… confusion. I have an MBA, a CPA, and a 140 IQ, and I still don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. I do sense, however, that I’m being screwed. :-)