<prompt> Human: I have a few questions about retirement investing. I just recently became eligible to invest in my companies 401k.I have only put a small portion of money 67 per bi-weekly paycheck into the company 401k because of the high fee. The 401k paperwork stated an average fee of 1.83 of the account balance that the investment company collects ING. However I want to use the company 401k for the company match, which is only 20 of the first 4 of my income. Based on my income without overtime, the company will only match 20 of 36.80, which translates into 7.36 per paycheck, not much but its extra money.I have done some quick research on other companies and particularly into Vanguard for fee structure and came to the conclusion using some super spreadsheet powers, hopefully correctly that I can maximize my earnings by only putting a small portion the 67 into my company 401k and getting their meager match and then putting the extra money I want to save into a roth IRA that I open and manage on my own.My questionsconcerns are as follows:I was looking into putting another 150 to 200 a paycheck into the roth account that I want to open and was looking at investing it into mutual funds do I invest in multiple funds or do I pick one and trust that will diversify it enough?.Should I instead pick and choose my own stocks and bonds etc and not bother with mutual funds?Am I misinterpreting the fees and the 1.83 offered by my company is actually a decent deal?I have read a lot about Charles Schwab, Fidelity, and Vanguard being some of the top providers, does Vanguard make the most sense for what I want to do?Any help you guys can provide on the matter is appreciated!Thanks  <response>: You are correct, an expense ratio of 1.83 sucks. But that is the average, so there may be some funds with some cheaper fees. You need to look at each individual fund. Put just enough in your 401k to get the maximum match. You are getting an instant 20 return on your money, which will be hard to get on your own. After that, you are correct, you want a Roth IRA. You dont want to be buying and selling your own stocks, as this will take a lot to diversify. You probably want to look at some index funds that have low expenses. As to just one, it depends on what you get. There are some target date retirement funds, where you select the one close to the year you expect to retire, and it changes its allocation of stocks and bonds as you get closer to the retirement time. The downside is these will probably have higher fees.You might want to pick up a couple of books on investing to help you learn. There are some good ones listed in the FAQ at the right--- 