[Perfectlap]

If you hire any manner of 'financial advice" person make sure theyre a fiduciary. Don't buy any explanations for why they aren't. This was a lesson my folks learned the hard way at an age where there are no mulligans.

Don't buy mutual funds. Biggest scam ever. The number of funds that beat the S&P 500 over 10 years is a shocking joke. Their fees are not properly reported, they calculate only the front end and that's based on your total contribution not on the actual part of your return that stays in their pockets. And they don't disclose the back end fees like trading fees and spreads on a per fund basis. Combine the two (fixed and variable fees) and in the long term its no different than carrying a high interest credit on high debt...you are getting robbed blind. And the pee poor performance applies to virtually ever managed asset class hedge funds in particular. The author Michael Lewis said it best in one of his early books, Liars Poker I believe, these guys are nothing more than well paid toll takers. Bottom line, if you are investing a significant portion of your available capital into the stock market, invest in index funds, ETFs and run from active management fees as fast as you can.
Those guys were saying for years that their plans reduced risk to justify their hugely inflated fees and salaries. Then came the mother of all tests of this justification in 2008 and they all failed miserably. The number of funds that preserved their investors' capital and didn't bleed half of it or more, nearly overnight, could fit in a thimble. They were forced to ride out the down turn and pray for a reversal just like every index fund but still charged you their inflated fees. And how much are these fees costing you over the course of 30 years since your initial investment? Try as much as 66% according to John Bogle, the longer they manage this money the less you'll see. Its the big dirty secret of most 401k plans that try to steer you into mutual funds instead of index funds. I called the investment firm handling my 401k funds and was not surprisingly told that no matter what I chose I would still have to keep half of my contributions stuck in their pre-selected group of "diversified" mutual funds sucking away a third or more of each years return. Returns that the s&p handily beat for every single one of those over-priced funds.

As for picking individual stocks, that's also a very tough game to win. The S&P is going to beat 99.6% of those who try. Fine for a few shares but that's really just a learning exercise and not an overall strategy for the bulk of your finite capital. If the $10k you are putting into a company stock is anything approaching double digits of your total investments you are headed for a costly lesson.