MINN vs SCMB

MINNCMairs & Power Minnesota Municipal Bond ETF

SCMBASchwab Municipal Bond ETF

In short

MINN A muni fund with a ZIP code. MINN holds roughly 90 Minnesota bonds and seeks current income exempt from both federal and Minnesota income taxes, for 0.25% a year.

SCMB Schwab's take on the core muni sleeve: three basis points, thousands of AMT-free bonds from across the country, and a monthly distribution. Bottom-of-the-table pricing, no frills attached.

Stated mandate

MINN The Fund seeks current income exempt from federal and Minnesota income taxes.

SCMB The fund seeks to track, before fees and expenses, the total return of an index representing the U.S. AMT-free municipal bond market.

Why people hold it

• MINN The mandate is unusually specific: income exempt from federal and Minnesota income taxes, not a national grab bag of 50 states' paper.
• At 0.25% a year it charges less than the median muni bond ETF (0.30%), which is rare for a single-state portfolio.
• Pays monthly and spreads exposure across roughly 90 bonds rather than a handful of issuers.
• Live since 2021, so there is a real multi-year record to read instead of a launch-week backtest.

• SCMB Three basis points a year, against a 0.30% median for muni bond funds. Among the top-graded names in the category, only Vanguard's VTEB matches that fee.
• Follows the ICE AMT-Free Core U.S. National Municipal Index across thousands of bonds and issuers, so no single borrower or state drives the portfolio.
• Plain passive plumbing done well: it stays close to its index, trades actively, and pays monthly. One of the stronger implementations in the muni aisle.

Worth knowing

• MINN A small, thinly traded fund. Trades can meet wider bid-ask spreads than the giants of the muni aisle.
• The Minnesota half of the tax break only does work for Minnesota taxpayers. Everyone else is paying a state-specific fee for federal exemption alone.
• National muni ETFs such as VTEB and SCMB run at 0.03%, so the state tilt costs roughly eight times the cheapest broad option.

• SCMB Launched in 2022, so its live record is shorter than muni staples like MUB and VTEB, even though the strategy is the same broad-market idea.
• Bond math still applies. This is a portfolio of municipal bonds, so share prices move opposite to interest rates.
• National in scope, not single-state like NYF, so it is not built around any one state's tax rules.

Full MINN profile⁠

Full SCMB profile⁠