Mutual Funds

We invest mostly in mutual funds. Mutual funds pool together $ from thousands of investors. They can be established to invest in very specific instruments such as healthcare equities only or municipal bonds from the state of California.

Larry Burkett states in his book "Investing for the Future" that there are 3 benefits to using mutual funds for investments.

1) "most allow small incremental investments

2) they provide professional investment management

3) they allow great flexibility through the shifting of funds"

We invest a regular increment each month into a managed fund that holds both bonds and stocks. We do not have the expertise or the time to make decisions about what to buy and what to sell.

We do monitor performances of our mutual funds. Most fund companies issue quarterly performance reports. We also subscribe to Money Magazine and Smart Money which monitor many funds. I have used Morningstar on line to track funds. These are helpful tools when deciding to invest in a mutual fund as well.

The bottom line, we understand the goals of the funds and we monitor performance. We also keep an eye on expenses. Mutual funds have to disclose expenses also.

'til later