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This is pretty close to what I'm shooting for. A simpler version is 1/3 small cap, 1/3 large cap, 1/3 international, all index funds.
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I just opened an Etrade Roth IRA account with 4K. I don't want to spend much time managing my money, and after reading this forum for a couple hours decided on roughly the dispersement above. The problem I'm finding is that all of the index funds I've looked at purchasing require a 2.5K minimum investment. This really doesn't allow me to diversify with only 4K to work with. Anyone know of index funds with lower minimum purchase requirments, or is this just an Etrade requirement? Any other advice would be appreciated. I didn't think of looking into this prior to funding the account.
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I'm new to this stuff, so someone please correct me if my advice is bad!
You should consider investing in an exchange-traded fund. ETFs are funds meant to mimic indices and -- like index funds -- have very low fees. The distinguishing characteristic of ETFs is that they trade in intra-day trading on the stock market. This means that the "minimum investment" is merely the price of a single share -- almost certainly less than 2.5k!
To find ETFs that represent the indices you're interested in, check out
http://finance.yahoo.com/etf.