squat300 wrote:expenses on

[UCGal]

[quote=squat300]expenses on funds matter a lot[/quote]
I agree with this.

Vanguard, in general has the lowest expense ratios… but Schwab and Fidelity have some funds that come close.

Vanguard is definitely a DIY oriented fund company… but heaven help you if you need customer service. They lost paperwork (death certificates) 3 times before they finally were able to transfer my dad’s accounts per the executors wishes. And then couldn’t correlate the same death certificate over to the 529’s… so more lost copies before that got transferred over. I still have Vanguard accounts – but STRONGLY prefer Schwab’s customer service if anything non-standard comes up. And the expense ratio’s are very close for similar index funds.

If you want a good idea on asset allocation and how to set up a simple approach – look over at the bogleheads forum for the lazy portfolio or couch potato portfolio…
http://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Lazy_Portfolios
http://assetbuilder.com/couch_potato/couch_potato_cookbook

You don’t have to do Vanguard funds – any low cost INDEX funds will work – from the proper asset class.