Its a quote by John Bogle’s book, “The Little Book of Common Sense Investing: The Only Way to Guarantee Your Fair Share of Stock Market Returns”
The explanation is “In other words, every dollar you don’t pay to an active manager is a dollar of return that belongs to you, not the manager. Reality turns out to be just the opposite of the adage: “You get what you pay for.”
When you invest your money and you delegate someone else to look after it for you, does capitalism mean they should charge as much as possible? They are in business to manage your money, so they make more money by charging more. You may think, that’s no different to a designer suit and luxury motor car. You get what you pay for. Actually, No. I repeat, No.
If the investment manager, wealth manager or whoever you have delegated your money can make more money than everyone else and take his/her cut, and you are still better off, then you get what you pay for. Sadly, finding managers to manage your money and achieve that objective is rare. Actually, pigs can fly rare. It why Bogle, says “The grim irony of investing, then, is that we investors as a group not only don’t get what we pay for, we get precisely what we don’t pay for. So if we pay for nothing, we get everything.”
Clearly, it doesn’t mean you don’t invest; it means you think more about what you are paying for.