Bond index fund
Investing in bonds is a great idea in moderation. Depending on your age and your objectives you should have between 5 and 25 percent of your portfolio in bonds. It can be tough however to find individual bonds to put your money in. There are bond mutual funds, but they charge loads and fees that can completely take away all of your potential profits.
Thankfully vanguard, a company that specializes in very low cost index funds of all kinds has come out with a new bond index fund. You can click here to check it out. The index fund will get you comparable returns to the bond market which is all that you are looking for. On top of this the expense ratio is a very low .22% a year and there are no loads which will do wonders for your portfolio over time.
The only negative I see to this bond index fund is that the minimum investment is 3 thousand dollars. I am sure that most of you have more than 3 thousand dollars in your portfolio but it is also important to remember that bonds are very conservative investments and should only make up a portion of your portfolio.
If you are a true “baller” there are admiral shares, which require a minimum 100k investment but reduces the expense ratio down to .14%.