Certified Annual Shareholder Report for Management Investment Companies (n-csr)

I mportant information about expenses

All shareholders of the TIAA-CREF Funds incur ongoing costs, including management fees and other fund expenses. They may also incur transactional costs for redemptions or account maintenance fees.
          The expense example that appears in the table on page 5 is intended to help you understand your ongoing costs only (in U.S. dollars) and does not reflect transactional costs or the costs incurred by the fund for buying and selling securities. The example is designed to help you compare these ongoing costs with the ongoing costs of investing in other mutual funds.
          The expenses shown do not include redemption fees or account maintenance fees, which may or may not be applicable, as described in the prospectus. If such fees were included, your total costs for investing in the fund would be higher. Note also that shareholders of the TIAA-CREF Funds do not incur a sales charge for purchases, reinvested dividends or other distributions.
          The example is based on an investment of $1,000 invested at the beginning of the six-month period and held for the entire period (October 1, 2012–March 31, 2013).

Actual expenses

The first line of the two lines listed for each share class in the table uses the class’s actual expenses and its actual rate of return. You may use the information in this line, together with the amount you invested, to estimate the expenses that you paid over the six-month period.
          Simply divide your account value by $1,000 (for example, an $8,600 account value divided by $1,000 = 8.6), then multiply the result by the number in the first line under the heading “Expenses paid during period” to estimate the expenses you paid during the six-month period.

Hypothetical example for comparison purposes

The second line in each share class’s entry shows hypothetical account values and expenses based on the share class’s actual expense ratio for the six-month period and an assumed 5% per year rate of return before expenses. This was not the share class’s actual return.
          This hypothetical example cannot be used to estimate the actual expenses you paid for the period but rather allows you to compare the ongoing costs of investing in the fund with the costs of other funds. To do so, compare this 5% hypothetical example with the 5% hypothetical examples that appear in the shareholder reports of other mutual funds.