As a caveat, it should be noted that John Bogle, founder of Vanguard (and the whole index investing movement, for that matter) is not a big fan of the ETFs. Ch

As a caveat, it should be noted that John Bogle, founder of Vanguard (and the whole index investing movement, for that matter) is not a big fan of the ETFs. Check out http://www.indexuniverse.com/sections/news/6012-bogle-investors-are-getting-killed-in-etfs.html http://www.indexuniverse.com/sections/news/6012-bogle-invest... to see how Vanguard's ETFs performed against Vanguard's index funds (in short, not well). I agree with Adams that index based investing is a great idea for hands off people, but do yourselves a favor and read Bogle's seminal book on index investing: http://www.amazon.com/Little-Book-Common-Sense-Investing/dp/0470102101/ http://www.amazon.com/Little-Book-Common-Sense-Investing/dp/... first. It's very concise but it will serve you well.