--Not sure what this means. Can you expand on this?

My company's 401K is run through Transamerica retirement (they provide the fund choices, make purchases/sales, etc.)... the corporation of which i am a part has around one hundred employees, and collectively the pension contributions are a total dollar figure that permits the waiver of any loads/12b1 fees as well as reducing the management fees...

if i, as a contributor, were unhappy with the choices offerred by transamerica, i would have the option of "self directing"--going out into the market and picking any fund/stock/bond i desired... but any/all loads, fees, add-ons would apply as in the retail world...

--Yes it is appropriate and yes you should be investing in indexes, especially in your 401k IMHO

Growth fund of America isn't an index fund, is it??


--Oakmark and American are good funds IMHO. I'm guessing you're going through Scottrade or something (if not, I would recommend it.) The expense ratios on American are a bit high and I don't believe in loads. Oakmarks are no loads but expense ratios are a little on the high side. I can't say they are not solid funds


I purchased the IRAs directly through Oakmark... i have an account through Schwab but will plan on closing that after getting to know their fee structure a bit better... Scottrade seems to be popular on this list... if Scottrade doesn't offer a particular fund that you are interested in, do you just have to get it directly from the fund provider??