But Which Mutual Funds?: How to Pick the Right Ones to Achieve Your Financial Dreams Book

	Introduction	xii
Part 1	The First (and Most Important) Steps	1
Chapter 1	Getting Started	3
	Meet the DiBenedettos, newcomers to investing
	How funds work and earn you money
	Things you don't need to worry about
	The difference between "load" and "no-load" funds
	Why you should start now
	The importance of a portfolio of funds
Chapter 2	What Are Your Goals?	17
	Determining your investment goals
	When will you need the money?
	The differences between stock funds, bond funds and money-market funds
	Bonds seem contrary: When their yields go up, their prices go down
Chapter 3	Do You Like Fast Cars?	25
	How to keep emotions from derailing your investment plan
	Market declines are torturous
	Investing a preset amount regularly is the best way to deal with the market's ups and downs
	Take this test to find out how much risk you can handle
	Learn how much you should invest in stock funds, bond funds and money-market funds
Part 2	Putting Together Your Investment Plan	35
Chapter 4	Keeping It Really Simple: Investing With Index Funds	37
	It's hard to "beat the market"
	Which index funds to employ
	A complete investment plan using just three funds
	Index funds require virtually no monitoring
	The right index-fund portfolio for you
	Another low-maintenance approach
Chapter 5	Investing for (and in) Retirement	49
	How much income you'll need monthly in retirement
	What Social Security and pensions will provide
	How many years in retirement?
	How much to save monthly
	IRAs, 401(k)s, Roth IRAs, and other retirement plans
	Solid fund portfolios
	Pitfalls of variable annuities
Chapter 6	Investing for College	77
	Investing for college isn't as hard as many people fear
	How much to save
	Fund portfolios for college and for other goals (except retirement) that are more than ten years away
Chapter 7	Investing for the Short Term	89
	Fund portfolios for goals (except retirement): Six to ten years away
	Four to six years away
	Two to four years
	Less than two years
Chapter 8	How and Where to Buy Funds	95
	Should you use an online broker?
	Step by step through fund application forms
	How to transfer an IRA or other retirement account
	Looking up fund data
Chapter 9	Paying Uncle Sam	109
	Keep careful records or use these shortcuts
	Let your funds or online broker do the hard work
	If you're selling shares of a fund, sell all of them
	Don't write checks on bond funds
	Don't buy a fund just before a dividend distribution
Chapter 10	13 Investment Pitfalls	121
	Timing the market is usually a mistake
	Be wary of "hot funds"
	Sell funds that underperform for several years
	Ignore the stock market's short-term moves
	You only need a handful of funds
	Stay away from "bear-market" funds
Chapter 11	Want Someone to Do It for You?	135
	Do it yourself in about the same time for less money
	Help getting started
	Leads from friends and relatives, and other ways to find skilled financial advisers
	What to ask a prospective adviser
	Assistance from fund companies: good, free advice from some of them
Part 3	How to Pick Good Stock Funds	149
Chapter 12	A Look at the Long Term	151
	Why it makes so much sense to invest as much of your long-term money in the stock market as your time horizon and tolerance for risk will allow
	Accounting for inflation
	Performance snapshots: stocks versus bonds versus cash, 1926-1999. What they mean if you're investing for periods of one year, five years, or ten years or more
	Average after-inflation returns of stocks since 1802 are strikingly similar to those since 1926
	Two bad bear markets
Chapter 13	Starting the Search for the Right Funds	161
	Similar fund names make it important to know their precise names
	Some funds are badly named
	When looking at fund performance, focus on total return
	Stocks funds are divided into eight broad investment objectives, as are bond funds
Chapter 14	Investing With Style	173
	A fund's style tells you how it aims to achieve its objective and helps you compare funds
	It's difficult to compare funds without understanding their styles
	Large-company value, large-company growth, small-company value and small-company growth
	Owning all four styles, plus an international fund, will reduce your fund portfolio's volatility
Chapter 15	How to Pick Winning Stock Funds	185
	Long-term performance against peers is the most important number
	Look for consistently above-average returns
	Learn how volatile a fund is relative to other, similar funds
	New manager, new fund?
	Be wary of funds whose assets have mushroomed
	Favor funds with low expense ratios
	Where to look it up, online and in print
Chapter 16	When to Sell a Fund	199
	Review your funds at least annually, but don't be too quick to sell
	Why investors sell too soon
	Compare funds only to appropriate benchmarks or to funds with the same style
	Increasing assets--deteriorating performance?
	Sell if you find a better funds
Part 4	Winning Mutual Funds	207
Chapter 17	Great Stock Funds	209
	Twenty exemplary stock funds in a variety of investment objectives and styles
	Descriptions of the funds
	Important statistics about them
	Doing good and doing well
Chapter 18	How to Pick Top Bond and Money-Market Funds	235
	Low expenses are the key
	It's hard to beat Vanguard
	Focus on total return rather than yield
	Compare funds with similar weighted average maturities and similar average credit qualities
	First-rate bond, municipal bond and money-market funds
	Individual bonds instead of bond funds?
	Afterword	249
	After a few years of investing, Paul and Nancy DiBenedetto look back on what they've learned, offer advice to new investors and discuss their plans for the future
	Index	253