Q In a recent column you recommended Ginnie Mae bond funds as a possible alternative to putting money in low-paying banks and money funds. You failed to mention the interest-rate risk that Ginnie Mae funds face. Am I missing something?

— J.T., Lafayette

Q Some years ago, you and I went the rounds on Ginnie Mae bond funds. You were very opposed to them. I had a substantial amount of money in them at that time, but as interest rates went up the price of my Ginnie Mae funds went down. Now apparently you have changed your mind. You seem to think that interest rates are going to stay low for some time.

— C.F., by e-mail

A You are both right. I should have made it clear that Ginnie Mae bond funds, like all bond funds, are sensitive to interest rates. When interest rates rise, bond prices fall, so someone owning a Ginnie Mae fund might see his or her interest rate income more than offset by the falling price of the fund. Right now, interest rates are low, and although they seem to be stable, they could easily rise in the near future.

I included Ginnie Mae funds in the column on seeking higher rates because I had run out of good ideas. Vanguard GMA fund has shown price stability for several months and its interest rate beats banks and money funds. But one should never forget that all investments carry some risk.

Q Where can I find a table that shows the price of a stock's price performance over one, three, five and 10 years? I tried to get the information on finance.yahoo.com, a Web site you recommend, but to no avail.

— S,M., Dublin

A I'm not aware that any such table exists, but maybe one of my readers has an idea. On finance.yahoo.com, as you must have discovered, clicking on to a stock's "historical prices" gets you to a long list of prices of a stock going back several years. But that's not in table form and is cumbersome to use.

The other alternative is to check the stock in The Value Line Investment Survey, if Value line includes that stock in the 1,600 it covers. There you will find a price graph and a price chart that goes back at least 10 years. Again, this is not a handy table showing prices over the spans you suggest. As I have said in the past, Value line is available at most public libraries.

Q The stock mutual fund where I have my money is rising the annual fee that it charges me. It's just a small amount, but I'm surprised that a fund that doesn't charge a commission to buy a fund would do this. What's the deal?

— D.I., Oakland

A All mutual funds, no-load (commission-free) or load (those charging an up-front commission to buy) also impose an annual fee, called an expense ratio.

Some investors are surprised that a no-load fund would do this, but even no-load funds need money to pay for operating expenses.

A fund's expense ratio is calculated as a percentage of the fund's average annual assets and the problem today is that investors have been fleeing mutuial funds because of their poor performance, driving down the size of annual assets and thus driving down the expense ratios. So funds have been forced to increase their annual fees. According to fund tracker Lipper Analytical Services, some 70 percent of stock funds have been forced to hike their fees.

Most of the hikes are tiny, but it doesn't take much to increase a fund's income. For example, if a fund with $10 billion in assets (not an uncommon size) would earn an additional $1 million a year by increasing its annual fee by 0.01 percent.

Q In your Nov. 8 column, you stated that the rate of inflation is virtually zero, I know that the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury agree with this assessment, but what I find in my life is that many major expenditures — such as car and home insurance, property taxes, doctor and dentist fees, electricity and heating costs, etc — are not included in the cost-of-living calculation. Please inform your readers about this oversight by inflation trackers.

— G.M., by e-mail

A The rate of inflation, as calculated each month in the Consumer Price Index by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in the Department of Labor, is indeed controversial. Consumers have complained for many years that their cost of living has risen despite the Bureau's report that the CPI has dropped.

While the CPI reportedly covers food, beverages, housing costs including mortgage payments and rent, medical care, and recreation and education expenses, I believe that everyone's cost of living varies from those measures -- usually rising higher. So what good is the CPI? Actually, it can do some harm. For example, the government decided not to grant Social Security beneficiaries a cost-of-living increase this year because the rate of inflation is said to be flat.

Closing Comment: How can the federal government have the nerve to tell us to live within our means when the government doesn't?

— N.R., San Mateo

Cliff Pletschet's Personal Finance column appears Saturday and Sunday. Send general-interest questions to him at P.O. Box 28147, Oakland, CA 94604 or e-mail him at cliffpletschet@sbcglobal.net. Give your name, city and the question in brief form.

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