Long time stalker, first time poster! Excited to join the community!
My wife is eligible to start taking advantage of her new job's 401k. They match up to 4%, and we intend to max out her contributions. Luckily (and ;) unfortunately) I have been a 3M reader for about a year now, absorbing the wisdom. So my first step when she brought home her investment options was to browse through looking for a cheap index fund. To my horror, chagrin, and dismay I found no such thing. Instead her company has a very small array of funds with an average expense ratio of 1.5%.
The closest I could find to an index fund was a set of 'managed' funds that "provide diversification." As far as I can tell that's another word for "provide security for the fund manager's boathouse."
The expense ratios for these funds are actually cheaper than the others, and they let me pick from four levels of aggresiveness. The highest, however, has an expense ratio of 1.1%.
What do you do when you can't let statistics do your fund picking for you?