Mutual funds are almost certain to play an important role in your financial future because they offer many benefits which will make your investing program easier and safer. Here are twenty of their major advantages.

Advantage #1: Mutual funds can reduce the anxiety of investing. Most investors constantly live with a certain amount of anxiety and fear about their investments. This is usually because they feel they lack one or more of the following essentials: (1) market knowledge, (2) investing experience, (3) self-discipline, (4) a proven game plan, or (5) time. As a result, they often invest on impulse or emotion. The advantages offered by mutual funds can go a long way toward relieving the burdens associated with investing.

Advantage #2: Mutual fund shares can be purchased in such small amounts that it makes it easy to get started. If you have been putting off starting your investing program because you don't know which stocks to invest in and you can't afford your own personal investment consultant to tell you, mutual funds will get you on your way. It doesn't require large sums of money to invest in mutual funds. Most fund organizations have minimum amounts needed in order to initially open your account, which usually run from $1,000 to $3,000. And if that's too much, most funds have dramatically lower minimums for IRAs and "automatic deposit accounts" where you agree to make regular monthly deposits to build your account.

Advantage #3: Mutual fund accounts can also be added to whenever you want-often or seldom-in small amounts. After meeting the initial minimum (if any) to open your account, you can add just about any amount you want. To make your purchase work out evenly, they'll sell you fractional shares. For example, if you invest $100 in a fund selling at $7.42 a share, the fund organization will credit your account with 13.477 shares ($100.00 divided by $7.42 = 13.477).

Advantage #4: Mutual funds reduce risk through diversification. Stock funds typically hold from 50 to 500 stocks in their portfolios; the average is around 100. They do this so that any loss caused by the unexpected collapse of any one stock will have only a minimal effect on the pool as a whole. Without the availability of mutual funds, the investor with just $2,000 to invest would likely put it all in just one or two stocks (a very risky way to go). But by using a mutual fund, that same $2,000 can make the investor a part owner in a very large, professionally researched and managed portfolio of stocks.

Advantage #5: Mutual funds' price movements are far more predictable than those of individual stocks. Their extensive diversification, coupled with outstanding stock selection, makes it highly unlikely that the overall market will move up without carrying almost all stock mutual funds up with it. For example, on August 14, 2000, when the Dow jumped 148 points, more than 98% of stock mutual funds were up for the day. Yet, of the more than 3,300 stocks that traded on the New York Stock Exchange, only about half ended the day with a gain. The rest ended the day unchanged (15%) or actually fell in price (33%).

Advantage #6: Mutual funds' past performance is a matter of public record. Advisory services, financial planners, and stockbrokers have records of past performance, but how public are they? And how were they computed? Did they include every recommendation made for every account? Mutual funds have fully disclosed performance histories, which are computed according to set standards. With a little research, you can learn exactly how various mutual funds fared in relation to inflation or other investment alternatives.

Advantage #7: Mutual funds provide full-time professional management. Highly trained investment specialists are hired to make the decisions as to which stocks to buy. The person with the ultimate decision-making authority is called the portfolio manager. The manager possesses expertise in many financial areas, and hopefully has learned-through experience-to avoid the common mistakes of the amateur investor. Most important, the manager is expected to have the self-discipline necessary to doggedly stick with the mutual fund's strategy even when events move against him for a time.

Advantage #8: Mutual funds allow you to efficiently reinvest your dividends. If you were to spread $5,000 among five different stocks, your quarterly dividend checks might amount to $10 from each one. It's not possible to use such a small amount to buy more shares without paying very high relative commissions. Your mutual fund, however, will gladly reinvest any size dividends for you automatically. This can add significantly to your profits over several years.

Advantage #9: Mutual funds offer you automatic withdrawal plans. Most funds let you sell your shares automatically in an amount and frequency of your choosing. This pre-planned selling enables the fund to mail you a check for a specified amount monthly or quarterly. This allows investors in stock funds that pay little or no dividends to receive periodic cash flow.

Advantage #10: Mutual funds provide you with individual attention. It has been estimated that the average broker needs 400 accounts to make a living. How does he spread his time among those accounts? The common-sense way would be to start with the largest accounts and work his way down. Where would that leave your $2,000 account? But in a mutual fund, the smallest member of the pool gets exactly the same attention as the largest because everybody is in it together.

Advantage #11: Mutual funds can be used for your IRA and other retirement plans. Mutual funds offer accounts that can be used for IRAs, Keoghs, and 401(k) plans. They're especially useful for rollovers (which is when you take a lump sum payment from an employer's pension plan because of your retirement or termination of employment and must deposit it into an IRA investment plan account within sixty days). The new IRA rollover account can be opened at a bank, S&L, mutual fund or brokerage house and the money then invested in stocks, bonds, or money market securities. These rollover accounts make it possible for you to transfer your pension benefits to an account under your control while protecting their tax-deferred status. They are also useful for combining several small IRAs into one large one.

Advantage #12: Mutual funds allow you to sell part or all of your shares at any time and get your money quickly. By regulation, all open-end mutual funds must redeem (buy back) their shares at their net asset value whenever you wish. It's usually as simple as a toll-free phone call. Of course, the amount you get back will be more or less than you initially put in, depending on how well the stocks in the portfolio have done during the time you were a part owner of the pool.

Advantage #13: Mutual funds enable you to instantly reduce the risk in your portfolio with just a phone call. Most large fund organizations (usually referred to as "families") allow investors to switch from one of their funds to another via a phone call and at no cost. One extremely popular use of this feature is to switch back and forth between a growth-oriented stock fund (during bull markets) and a more conservative income or money market fund (when the stock market weakens and a bear market threatens). This exchange feature enables you to act quickly on the basis of your stock market expectations.

Advantage #14: Mutual funds pay minimum commissions when buying and selling for the pool. They buy stocks in such large quantities that they always qualify for the lowest brokerage commissions available. An average purchase of $2,000 of stock will cost the small investor $60 to buy and sell. That's a 3% commission charge. On the other hand, the cost is a mere fraction of 1% on a large purchase like $100,000. Many investors would show gains rather than losses if they could save almost 3% on every trade! The mutual-fund pool enjoys the savings from these massive volume discounts, enhancing the profitability of the pool. Eventually, then, part of that savings is yours.

Advantage #15: Mutual funds provide a safe place for your investment money. Mutual funds are required to hire an independent bank or trust company to hold and account for all the cash and securities in the pool. This custodian has a legally binding responsibility to protect the interests of every shareholder. No mutual fund shareholder has ever lost money due to a mutual fund bankruptcy.

Advantage #16: Mutual funds handle your paperwork for you. Capital gains and losses from the sale of stocks, as well as dividend and interest income earnings, are summarized into a report for each shareholder at the end of the year for tax purposes. Funds also manage the day-to-day chores such as dealing with transfer agents, handling stock certificates, reviewing brokerage confirmations, and more.

Advantage #17: Mutual funds can be borrowed against in case of an emergency. Although you hope it will never be necessary, you can use the value of your mutual fund holdings as collateral for a loan. If the need is short-term and you would rather not sell your funds because of tax or investment reasons, you can borrow against them rather than sell them.

Advantage #18: Mutual funds involve no personal liability beyond the investment risk in the portfolio. Many investments, primarily partnerships and futures, require investors to sign papers wherein they agree to accept personal responsibility for certain liabilities generated by the undertaking. Thus, it is possible for investors to actually lose more money than they invest. This arrangement is generally indicative of speculative endeavors; I encourage you to avoid such arrangements. In contrast, mutual funds incur no personal risk.

Advantage #19: Mutual fund advisory services are available that can greatly ease the research burden. Due to the tremendous growth in the popularity of mutual fund investing, there has been a big jump in the number of investment newsletters that specialize in researching and writing about mutual funds. Some promote timing strategies that tell you when to buy and sell, others focus on just the funds at one of the giant organizations such as Fidelity and Vanguard, and others recommend balanced, diversified portfolios of mutual funds geared to your risk tolerance and stage of life. They usually publish once a month, and average $234 per year in cost. To get information on my Sound Mind Investing newsletter, which includes specific mutual fund model portfolios for readers to follow, use the link at the end of this article to request a free information packet. The SMI newsletter costs $79 per year.

Advantage #20: Mutual funds are heavily regulated by the SEC and have operated largely scandal-free for decades. This may surprise you given all the recent headlines about mutual fund "scandals." However, the scope of these recent events has actually been quite narrow, and the actual damages to individual mutual fund investors very small. That's not to say these events shouldn't be investigated and corrected-they should be. But in a sense, the fact that relatively small abuses have received so much attention is testament to the long-standing positive track record of the mutual fund industry.

Think of mutual funds as offering the convenience of something you're pretty familiar with: eating out!

Someone else has done all the work of developing the recipes, shopping for quality at the best prices, and cooking and assembling the dinners so that foods that go well together are served in the right proportions. For mutual funds, that's the job of the professional portfolio manager-he develops his strategy, shops for the right securities at the best prices, and then assembles the portfolio with an appropriate amount of diversification. And the analogy doesn't stop there. Just as there are many different dinner entrees to choose from at most nice restaurants, there are also many kinds of mutual funds to choose from at most fund organizations. Each kind has its own "flavor."