Janus Mutual Funds

The Janus mutual funds company is one of the biggest names in the world of managed mutual funds. Janus has a reputation for looking after its customers' financial interests well and this has paid off time and time again. One of the ways that a mutual funds group can do this is by providing a large family of managed accounts that will suit most investors' needs.

Janus has a selection of 36 different funds spread over ten managed account types, namely: asset allocation; growth; specialty growth; core funds; risk managed; value; alternative; international and global; bond; and money market funds.

These funds specialize in global real estate funds and growth and income funds, amongst others. One interesting option is the Janus contrarian fund. All of these Janus funds have their own specialized portfolio managers.

In fact Janus mutual funds have won awards for the last three years running, despite the fact that it has been harder to make capital income than for a long, long time. If you want to check the latest league tables of mutual funds, there are several companies that maintain lists; one of them is Lipper, which presents annual awards to mutual funds.

With so much choice, most people who want to start investing will need to take advice from professional financial advisers. There are three ways of going about getting this advice:

1. contact a broker, who will appear to give you free advice, but who will in fact get paid by your mutual fund company from the funds that you send them to invest on your behalf
2. contact an independent financial adviser, who will not receive commission from anyone, so who will expect you to pay a fee for this independent advice
3. contact Janus (or any other mutual fund group head office) and talk to their account managers, but do not expect independent advice

The third method above will provide you with the least objective advice - you will only hear about the company's own financial products.

The first method above will render more independent advice, but these brokers will not tell you about mutual funds that will not give them a kick-back such as index mutual funds.

The second method above will provide you with totally independent advice or ought to and you can sue, if you find out later that they have not done that. They will waive fees from companies that pay commission, but they will charge you by the hour for their advice. Expect to pay roughly the same as you would for a solicitor. It is usually the cheapest and the best route in the long run.

No matter which route you take, you should do some research before you go to see an adviser (or talk to one on line) because it is easy to be overwhelmed as you are being flooded with masses of new information in the form of names, numbers and percentages.

You can avoid confusion when considering Janus mutual funds or any other company, by reading as much as you can absorb before you start talking. Make notes on your favourite ideas for likely funds too and definitely write down questions on points that you do not understand.

By tackling your investments in products like Janus mutual funds in this way, you can also cut down the amount of time that you will need to spend with an independent financial adviser, although paying a couple of hundred dollars for advice that will set you on the right track for 10-20 years is probably the least of your financial problems.