After church during fellowship hour we got to talking about saving money and investing. I know nothing about mutual funds, except I bought the Putnam fund for my daughter last year for her 23rd B-Day! Fifty dollars is deducted from my checking account every month for her fund. That is all I know. Can someone explain what a mutual fund is and any other suggestions you might have on investing would be helpful. Our religious education director and our director of evangelism will be putting on a class called "How to start investing" for the church. Thanks everyone. Oh, what is a CD.

-- Anonymous, February 28, 2001

Answers

After I posted my question I watched Oprah today and she had "ordinary people" who had been concientious above saving money. It was inspiring. So I called my daughter's financial planner and set up an appointment for friday. To get my mutual fund started, I am excited. When I look at my budget and how much money I spend eating out a month, I realize I could be saving money. Like grandma says "Chile those pennies add up!"

-- Anonymous, February 28, 2001

Dear Rev. Rogers,

Although, I am not an expert on investing but neither are the so called financial analyst. First, I would suggest that you pray to God about how best to invest your money. However, I don't think I need to tell you to pray, I am sure you will. In the long run, mutual funds offer a greater return on investments because the fund managers take the assets of the people and buy a large variety of stocks, bonds, gold, and commercial paper. I would advise you to talk to Fidelity which is the largest mutual fund company with 200 funds amounting to almost nine hundred billion dollars worth of assets. I recommend this fund because they have counselors who are quite honest and will give you recommendations based on your acceptable amount of risk taking. Of course all investments have some degree of risk or volatility ranging from low to high. For example, tech stocks have a high degree of volatility but some of your index funds such as the S&P 500 have moderate volatility. The funds with high volatility have high risk and high returns potentially. Therefore, it behooves the wise investor to invest for the long term and diversify ones assets across a broad range of mutual fund types such as index funds, small cap funds, large cap funds, bond funds, tech funds, etc. I would not advise any one to invest in international funds because of the uncertainty of a foreign country potential political/economic stability. Finally, since all the mutual funds claim to be great, you need an objective means of evaluating them. Frankly, there are none. Therefore, I recommend you use the Morningstar's Guide to mutual funds, Yahoo's financial browser, and compare its return to that of the S&P 500 return. Your mutual fund's return shoul exceed or equal that of the S&P 500 index. I challenge anyone else out there to counter this argument.

JazzMan

-- Anonymous, March 01, 2001

Jazzman wow! you know a lot about this stuff I am impressed. Thanks for the heads up about the Fidelity fund. That is the one my financial planner wants to talk to me about tomorrow. And yes I have been praying about it. One of the reason's I chose the financial planner that I did is because he is a christian. Jazzman how did you get into mutual funds? Thanks for your help.

-- Anonymous, March 01, 2001

Dear Rev. Rogers, I began educating myself about investments after college in 1982. Over the years I have learned that investing is an art and not a science despite all the brillant MBA's, economists, and investment bankers involved in the field. I have learned that there are as many mutual funds out there as there are individual stocks. There are also as many people like myself with many philosphies about investing. I have also learned that you don't have to be a millionaire to live a good quality life. I know this because I am not a millionaire and I am living a good quality life. I am going to pray that you choose the right mutual fund when you talk to your financial advisor at Fidelity. Although, tech funds and stocks are taking a beating right now as evidenced by the Nasdaq exhange, this society will ultimately get more technical businesses such as telecommunications, computers, and electronics so don't forget about tech funds. You also might want to search the web for the Pax fund. They are considered a "social responsible" fund and the biographical information about many of their fund managers show that many of them have divinity degrees. I hope you will have much success.

JazzMan

-- Anonymous, March 01, 2001

Jazzman I did it! I got my first mutual fund. I like it, it called Massachutes Investors Growth Fund. and Morningstar rates it with five stars. I was also impressed that my financial planner took so much time with me, answering all my questions. I didn't realize it, but I knew quite a bit. So we are going to have my financial planner do a seminar on how to invest in stocks and mutual funds as part of our church communtiy outreach. Oh, my 23 year old told me today she is going to start an investment club! To all that read this board it is never too late to invest and some funds start as low as twenty five to fifty dollars a month.

-- Anonymous, March 02, 2001

I have gotten private emails about how to get started in Mutual funds. I want to say all of this is brand new to me, but Jazzman gave me the confidence to do some reasearch on my own, and I felt good going to my financial planner. This board is so awesome. And Jazzman again thanks for your support!! I also wanted to share with everyone two things. 1.)Our church will be sponsoring a community workshop on investing, we have already lined up a financial planner. 2.) we belong to a denomination that holds high economic development and financial security for our people. I am glad we can talk about investsments. And lastly the funds I have mentioned work for me and my daughter. We have different plans for how to use our money. So ask questions and ask some more of financial planners. Keep me posted.

-- Anonymous, March 03, 2001