Here are interesting posts and news this week from the MoneyBlogNetwork members and beyond: AllFinancialMatters wants to know who pays $300 for a purse. MightyBargainHunter is working on setting financial goals. Five Cent Nickel offers thoughts on chec…

Here’s a quick look at posts that caught my eye over the past week (better late than never)…

JLP has a nice post on building wealth with other people’s money.
Jim gives us the skinny on paying estimated taxes on a quarterly basis.
F…

CFA = Chartered Financial Analyst

on Vanguard, I don’t have an account w/ them… so you should take this with a grain of salt. but from what I’ve read, choosing to have an account at vanguard depends on what you type of investment you want. they offer a great number of low fees, no-load funds.. but you should note that starting IRAs with them can be costly (in comparison to say, fidelity), if your account doesn’t meet the current minimum requirements.

it seems vanguard has been a lesser choice (in terms of cost) for smaller investor. I think each fund w/ less than $10k in it will get a $10 yearly fee. not a whole lot in a sense, but cost is cost.

it all depends on your investment style, but since you’re asking about indexing.. it doesn’t seem like you can go wrong w/ vanguard or fidelity, especially if you meet the minimum and the expense ratio is low enough for you.

for me, I choose to go w/ index-like ETFs for my indexing needs, which works well for me because I don’t put in small amounts (say, $100 per week/month), I buy a lump sum every now and then, pay simply the cost of the trade (under $10) at discount brokers. things will of course change if my level of income change.

there’s not much to say about index funds. they’re a no frill no fuss, buy and hold snore fest. but it’s in my opinion (again, grain of salt) that you really can’t go wrong with them as a part of your portfolio.

having say that, there are obvious disadvantages. if you have all your nest eggs purely in index funds, you obviously shouldn’t expect to out perform the market (course on the flip side you shouldnt under perform the market much either). having a large amount of asset in a particular index can also lower your range of diversification, since certain index can have a high percentage of the fund on a few large companies.

at the end, you should look into asset allocation to find the right mix of stocks, bonds, index in accordance with your risk tolerance and the return on investment that you’re looking for.

also, yes I did blog about yodlee. you can check them out at their official site.