Imagine that you are traveling in a foreign country. You’re feeling lousy, so you go to a health clinic. A man at the front desk says you must choose between two types of physicians.

Some people think a really good investment plan is complex and difficult; they may put it off thinking it’s no good unless it’s perfect. But an imperfect plan is better than none at all. In this article, Paul Merriman outlines 10 steps that will help you get off on the right foot.

Some investors tell me they would never have a portfolio that includes bonds. And sometimes I’ll run into an experienced investor who confesses that he or she has never been able to understand bonds. This always surprises me, because the basics of bonds are quite easy to figure out. In half an hour, an investor can learn enough to put bonds to work either as part or all of a portfolio. And on the other hand, there are enough wrinkles and nuances of bond investing to keep some people occupied for a lifetime trying to master all the fine points.

Reliability is a concept that we typically appreciate more and more as we mature. Young people are typically attracted to things that provide lots of “flash and dash.” Those of us with more decades under our belts have been disappointed enough times that we no longer take so much for granted. Over the years, we acquire more appreciation for the things that don’t let us down.

We've never made any bones about where we stand in the debate, if there still is one, between load and no-load mutual funds. There's a big difference between these two types of funds. Sometimes it's the difference between whether the investor makes money or whether a salesperson makes money.

We are often asked why we recommend investors keep half their equities in international funds. But we never hear that question from readers who took this article to heart when it was last updated in 2003.