<prompt> Human: I auto-transfer 300month to a mutual fund through Edward Jones. I started doing this through them because I fund my Roth IRA with them. All of the talk here about index funds has me thinking Id like your opinion on what I can be doing better. If Im reading this line from my monthly statement correctly I believe each month a 4.5 charge is built into the cost of buying the funds. 1118 Buy Fundamental Investors Fund A 53.70 50,000 Breakpt; 4.50 Chrg; Quantity 5.587; Amount -300.00Am I indeed paying 4.5 each month and can I instead invest differently to avoid that charge? Many thanks!EDIT: So much great advice, I cant thank you all enough! Ive been wanting to ask about this for a while now, so glad I finally did. Thanks!  <response>: Everyone else has explained pretty well how expensiveunnecessary all of these fees are.Heres what you should do: Call Vanguard. We recommend them because they are not for profit like a credit union, which also makes them low cost Tell them you want to move your IRA from Edward Jones. Theyll make a three-way call with them and get everything sorted out. If you dont know what investment to select, put 100 into the Vanguard Target Retirement fund for your age. Vanguard will figure out the paperwork.I highly recommend reading the long-term investing start-up kit link in the sidebar. If, after reading that, you want to make changes to the funds in your IRAetc., you can do that. 