A total market fund, or S&p 500 fund would be a good start. Pick something with a low percentage fee
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Decimal fractions of a percent are low fee. Vanguard is mostly, if not completely, low fee.
To quantify it, anything under 0.20% is "low" to me, and many funds are <0.05%.
That said, once you get below a certain amount, comparing between "low" fees isn't very interesting. For example, my 401k is switching their S&P 500 fund from a 0.04% fund to a 0.015% fund, which is >2.5x lower fees, but in terms of actual dollar amounts is pretty inconsequential (e.g. for $100k invested, it's $25/year savings. At that point, I'm much more interested in the quality of the fund (i.e. how well it tracks its index) than the actual fees, since even a small amount of inefficiency (more cash, late rebalances, etc) can be much more impactful than that fee difference.
So anything under 0.50% is fine, and anything under 0.20% is "good," and comparing expense ratios breaks down when the difference is <0.05%. At least that's my take.
100 percent this. Anything SP backed is gonna be safe. Unless you can do a CD, some have good rates of like 4-5 percent. T-bills tend to be too low yield for me tho.
Never say safe, especially with the S&P it is a risk and people should understand that, but for most people who predict being able to hold for a long period it works.
Go for whatever is the most diverse, without dipping too heavily in any one area.
I'm lazy and went VWCE. A world wide index fund with exposure to US, EU, and Asian markets.
I buy a bunch every year, I don't care about the buy price because the fund follows the market. If I get a few less because I got it on a rally, meh. If I get more because I got it during a dip, neat.
We'd really need to know what the 30 options are, to recommend one.
But I'd really recomend against it. The point of an HSA is to have cash available for medical expenses and emergencies. Over the long term (decades) index funds do consistently trend up. But on any given day, you never know. Money you were expecting to be there might not be. Now you've got a whole other problem.
If you have more money than you can imagine needing in the HSA, pick something with slow consistent growth and low or zero volatility.
I joined https://www.bogleheads.org/ which was also when I started learning about mutual funds
Bogle started the first index fund family (Vanguard), so there is an index fund bias with many there, but the forum has very knowledgeable people. (Full disclosure, I am busy, and use indexing myself, but not in Vanguard.)
You have managed to hit the best all-around choices on your first try.
The large difference is to learn to have the discipline to ride out the ups and downs of investing. In a recession, it is a gut punch to see your hard-earned investments drop. The losing segment says the whole market is rigged, screw this and lock in their losses by selling. When the market improves, highs are being clocked, these same are likely to forget their previous folly and buy in again. It is investing that is controlled by emotions, and is a buy high, sell low outcome. Mastering your emotions in investing is the key to investing. Many people give 1/4th of their money to brokers so that they will be reminded of the previous paragraph, when they need it most.
We are financially independent thanks to indexing, and using emotions in a constructive way. We also have been through a few ups and downturns, making money in each cycle, by riding it out, and asset allocation.
Follow your plan and ride things out, and you will likely be a multi-millionaire. It is not overnight, though.
schwab has an autobalancing option for a mix of stocks, bonds, and if you set it aggressive even commodoties I think. then there are at least I think two mutual funds that autobalance stocks and bonds and I think vanguard has one of them but you will have to look them up as a quick search did not get it for me and I don't feel like going further. but its a thing that exists.
If you have the time, read The Little Book of Common Sense Investing by Bogle. It will explain the principles most commenters are espousing here.
- Low cost
- Broad base
- Index fund
The only three things you need to know about index investing.
The largest cost factor you can control is costs so if you want to improve your selection look for funds that have very low fees (I.e. <1%)
This fund will literally beat the vast majority of actively managed funds over 10 years.
Don’t believe me though, just read ‘The Bet’ section in the 2016 Berkshire Hathaway letter to shareholders.