I have two Vanguard funds: VDC is consumer discretionary spending and VWINX is Vanguard Wellesley Income. The former is more aggressive than the latter. The latter is for the conservative part of investments of people my age. Vanguard is a good company.
I rely on a newsletter called Noload Fundx
www.fundx.com. It makes recommendations every month. They will send her a free sample copy.
T Rowe Price has a number of good funds, and will recommend her well, I think.
Fidelity has the very best website for analyzing funds and making recommendations.
I have never done business directly with Vanguard. It is a great company with about the lowest fees. TIAA-CREF,org also has very low fees, and also very trustworthy.
Merrill Lynch, Edward Jones and the non-discount brokers do not offer anything extra except higher fees. Always avoid load funds, the load only serves to pay commissions. They also have account maintenance fees, fees to open and close accounts and inactivity fees if you just do nothing. I have avoided them.
I suggest the Roth IRA as the best way to invest for retirement or any horizon 5 years or more in the future.You pay taxes, but all appreciation and dividends and interest generated you can take out tax free.
This guy got me started: he writes really good books on mutual funds. The 1995 book is the one that I read the most: all are good.
http://www.amazon.com/Sheldon-Jacobs/e/B001K8PSUI If she reads this, there is not much else to know.
The best performing Vanguard fund at the moment is the ETF (exchange trades fund) VYM Vanguard High Dividend Yield.
As a rule a $2500 minimum is needed to purchase no load mutual funds. Fidelity will charge you $7.95 to buy an ETF. Opening an account is free.
Scottrade will charge $7.00 for any amount.
With ETFs you need to buy a specific number of shares. With Mutual Funds, you can invest any amount: they also have shares, but they will sell you fractional shares,
Most Mutual Funds have a five letter ticker symbol ending in X
for example T Rowe Price Dividend Growth Fund is PRDGX they list the account like this:
PRDGX 790.502 shares @ 36.46 = 28,821.70
Do not invest in Canadian mining companies. Never inc[vest in anything that is not listed on the NASDAQ or NYSE where you can see the price daily.
If you do, you will almost certainly lose money.
You are required to say you have read the prospectus before you buy a mutual fund. ETFs are actually mutual funds that are trades by the minute, but you do not need to read anything to invest in them. The Morningstar Report (there is one for every fund, available online for free) has much more useful info than the prospectus.
The best financial magazine for the beginner is Kiplinger's.
Money used to be pretty good, but now they mostly tell you how to SPEND money.
