I always wondered what high-fee mutual funds were extracting from each and every family, on average. A little back of the envelope math:

• From the US Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances, as of 2007 (the latest avaliable data) the median college-educated family had a net worth of $280,800 (Table 4, Page A11).
• We take out the 66.1% of total assets which are nonfinancial (Table 8, Page A28 of the same study).
• From the ICI Factbook we know that the asset-weighted expense ratio across the mutual fund industry is 0.99%. 

Total mutual fund bill: $942.39

There you have it, probably the only thing the median family bought last year for a grand that a) they don't really know that they paid for, and b) where there are provably better products that cost way less.

Onwards, dear readers, to changing the world (and saving everyone a ton of money). 

- The FutureAdvisor Team

P.S. If you're not already a FutureAdvisor user, you can always find out what you're paying, and more importantly which funds you own have lower-cost alternatives, in less than 3 minutes and for free on FutureAdvisor.