Index Fund Advisors (“IFA”) has an excellent website that will give the visitor a specific education on index funds (www.ifa.com).
IFA handles Dimensional Fund Advisors (“DFA”) products and charges a “fee” to monitor your holdings. (Only certain Registered Investment Advisors [“RIA”] can sell DFA products, as they are not available to the general public — see http://www.dfaus.com).
There are less expensive RIAs who will “manage” your portfolio of DFA funds, and the least expensive I could find was Dr. Steven Evanson, a brilliant guy who also uses Vanguard products (www.evansonasset.com) Spend some time on his site. He has over a billion dollars under management and apprears to be a very fair and honest person (based on what I have read on his site and via other comments from clients of his).
Obviously, picking a manager and a group of funds to invest in is a personal choice. A pretty good site that I have found to compare DFA and Vanguard products is http://www.altruistfa.com/dfavanguard.htm
After lots of research, I have concluded that DFA and Vanguard are the best funds out there and I prefer most of the DFA funds over Vanguard, but both are excellent choices.
I guess the other thing to look at when comparing fees/costs is the net return after fees, which granted is sometimes very difficult to determine. Sometimes (albeit rarely) higher fees are charged because of a better mix, higher quality management team or some other factor that produces a higher net return, all things considered.
I know of several CTAs that charge as much as 25% of profits (one charges 50%) to manage accounts but they oftentimes return from 20%-40% per annum (pretty risky stuff but surprisingly consistent). Quite frankly, I don’t mind paying high fees if I can secure high returns, regardless of the investment vehicle (and that includes real estate) but most of the commodities stuff have standard deviations that make me dizzy, so I stay away from them.
I like Treasury Direct because it is simple to use and I never go out longer than 90 days. Besides I am a simpleton at heart, and I am merely parking money for a short time, always looking for my next real estate investment, which is where I have created 99% of my wealth. In a good market, you can’t beat the leverage you can get with real estate.
Having said all that, investments cycle and I think real estate is riding downhill so I am slowly moving into other investments besides treasuries (but still staying liquid by using products like index funds, ETFs (short term) and equities (Berkshire Hataway, series “B”).
