Just want to tack on for the OP (or anyone else): Look at the fees. The fees will destroy your retirement. Both the individual fund fees and the account management fees.
For example on my 401K provider they have funds with fees ranging from 0.19% (index fund) up to 0.58% (fully managed fund). You'd think that the fully managed funds outperform the index funds which makes the fees worthwhile, but actually the reverse is true (that the index funds have outperformed the managed funds historically).
If you don't manually select which funds to invest in they put a lot of your money into the more expensive funds.
Yep another great point. There was another thread about funds question yesterday and I said the same thing. Almost all "managed" funds offered in retirement plans don't even beat S&P 500. So you are probably better off putting most of the contribution in an index fund and just enjoy the "meager" S&P 500 returns. The expense ratio etc. are so much lower for these index funds.
Comments
This is great advice.
Just want to tack on for the OP (or anyone else): Look at the fees. The fees will destroy your retirement. Both the individual fund fees and the account management fees.
For example on my 401K provider they have funds with fees ranging from 0.19% (index fund) up to 0.58% (fully managed fund). You'd think that the fully managed funds outperform the index funds which makes the fees worthwhile, but actually the reverse is true (that the index funds have outperformed the managed funds historically).
If you don't manually select which funds to invest in they put a lot of your money into the more expensive funds.
Yep another great point. There was another thread about funds question yesterday and I said the same thing. Almost all "managed" funds offered in retirement plans don't even beat S&P 500. So you are probably better off putting most of the contribution in an index fund and just enjoy the "meager" S&P 500 returns. The expense ratio etc. are so much lower for these index funds.