Everything costs money whether you like it or not. As they say, “there’s no free lunch”. Even that ‘free’ toothbrush you got at the dentist cost someone money. When it comes to investing, even though you are making money, it is not free. You pay commissions when you buy stocks and you have to put in the time to research and purchase it. It costs your time and some money.

Mutual funds are a type of investment. You pool your money in with the money of other investments and a fund manager buys all different stocks for you. Sometimes you have to pay for these funds. You pay a percentage commission up front, or later on. In this case, you have to pay. With no-load mutual funds, you will come the closest to free money. No-load means you don’t have to pay any commissions or fees.

When you aren’t charged fees, you save that money you would have normally had to pay plus, you can earn more income on that money you saved. The more you save, the more money you earn.

With investing, you put your money to work for you. If you invest more, your more will earn more. With no-load funds, you get to put all the money you invest to work.

When you invest in stocks and bonds, you should never just blindly choose a stock. Don’t just choose a stock and buy it because you shopped there last week. This causes your risk to go way up. Instead, you have to put at least a few hours into research for each stock before you buy it. You may even put some research time into a stock and not end up buying it.

There is yet another time costing activity to investing directly in stocks. You need to know how to invest and how to research stocks. This is going to take quite a bit of time and learning. Once you get going, this time will reduce, but you’ll always be honing your skill.

Mutual funds save a lot of time. You don’t have to research, aside from choosing the initial fund, and you don’t have to know how to research. With a mutual fund, the fund manager, who is likely an expert, does all this for you. You save hours and hours of your time. You make the initial choice of a mutual fund and let the manager do the rest.

You can choose a loaded fund, but you’ll pay for it. Even if it does earn more than a no-load fund, the earnings will probably even out in the end. Plus, you can never be guaranteed a rate of return. Invest in a mutual fund for the easiest, most diversified portfolio, instantly.