index fund investing

What Is a Target-Date Fund? Best 2026 Guide

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Bar chart showing a target-date fund's asset-weighted average expense ratio falling from 1.23% in 2008 to 0.64% in 2025

If choosing investments feels like the part of retirement saving you keep putting off, a target-date fund is built to be the one decision that replaces all the others — you pick a single fund named for the year you plan to retire, and everything else it holds and how it shifts over time is … Read more

Do Index Fund Fees Really Matter? Best 2026 Numbers

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do index fund fees really matter, chart comparing 0.05% vs 0.64% expense ratios and 30-year growth

Do index fund fees really matter, or is a 0.5-percentage-point difference too small to worry about? According to the Investment Company Institute’s 2026 report on fund expenses, the average index equity mutual fund now charges just 0.05% a year, while the average actively managed equity fund charges 0.64% — a gap that looks tiny as … Read more