Fund of funds

A fund of funds is a mutual fund which holds other mutual funds, rather than individual stocks or bonds.

General recommendations
Funds of funds are excellent investments for getting started in an IRA or 401(k) because they offer a complete portfolio for a small investment. Often, the best way to start an IRA is with the appropriate Vanguard Target Retirement Funds; you can always change to a more complicated portfolio later.

It is normally best to avoid a fund of funds in a taxable account, although it would be possible to hold the a Vanguard Target Retirement Funds in a portfolio which is entirely taxable, getting the simplicity of management in return for a small tax cost.

Advantages
The most important advantage of a fund of funds is simplicity. A fund of funds which is a balanced fund is normally suitable for your entire portfolio, and requires no management as long as its allocation remains appropriate for you. With this in mind, Vanguard makes the Vanguard STAR Fund available with a minimum of $1,000, in contrast to the $3,000 required for all other funds.

Funds of funds provide an easy way for a fund company to provide a single, broadly diversified fund without the need for separate management, and make a broadly diversified portfolio available to small investors. In particular, it is possible to offer a series of funds which hold the same funds in different proportions; the Vanguard LifeStrategy Funds and Vanguard Target Retirement Funds are examples. Target date retirement funds from other fund companies are also usually funds of funds.

Possible extra expenses
Vanguard's funds of funds do not add an extra expense, but some fund companies do charge an expense for the fund of funds, in addition to the expenses charged by the underlying funds. There is no point in paying such an expense, as the management is not doing anything you could not do easily by yourself; you could hold the underlying funds, rebalance to the appropriate allocation regularly, and save the fees.

Even with Vanguard, the funds of funds have no Admiral classes; if your IRA grows large enough for Admiral shares, you may want to switch. (In a retirement plan, you may not have Admiral shares available, or may not even have all the underlying funds available.)

Taxes
A fund of funds which holds an international stock fund is ineligible for the foreign tax credit, because the fund did not itself pay the taxes to the foreign country. Therefore, Vanguard Tax-Managed International Fund, Vanguard Total International Index Fund, and Vanguard FTSE All-World ex-US Index Fund are currently better held in a taxable account than Vanguard Developed Markets Index Fund, which is currently transitioning from a fund of funds into a stock holding fund.

A fund of funds must pass on all capital gains distributed by the underlying funds, and cannot use the losses. It may also have to pay out its own gains when it rebalances, although many funds of funds can use new investments to rebalance and thus avoid distributing gains. Thus a fund of funds is more likely to distribute capital gains than a balanced fund with similar holdings.

Balanced funds

 * Vanguard Target Retirement Funds
 * Vanguard LifeStrategy Funds
 * Vanguard STAR Fund
 * Vanguard Managed Payout Funds

All-stock funds

 * Vanguard Diversified Equity Fund (US equity)
 * Vanguard Developed Markets Index Fund (Europe and Pacific equity; only partly a fund-of-funds now),