[sokoloff]

Have a look at the total fees for your account/index funds. My experience is that they are not always competitive with the lowest fees in the free financial markets. (3 basis points for Schwab S&P 500 index).

If your company is small or your benefits person clueless, you may have worse funds available to you than in the taxable brokerage world.

[perl4ever]

I think there are better things to worry about than a couple basis points. If I'm charged 1% for a basic index fund, sure that's a problem. But given the minute fees for most, the inefficiencies from trading strategies could dwarf the explicit fees - if you really care about every penny, you need to look at the actual tracking error. You may be surprised to find it's substantially larger than the fees.[1]

My attitude in practice is that if I'm getting an employer match, then why complain about fees? It's their problem to minimize them - I'm still doing better than I would on my own. The efficiency is their problem, and because they have an incentive to minimize their costs, there shouldn't be a systemic problem.

[1] Average ETF tracking error is said to be as high as 50 basis points: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/07/business/mutfund/exchange-...