One of the online discount brokers that is getting a lot of attention right now is Betterment. This site launched fairly recently, and the concept won the “Best of Show” at FinovateFall 2010. The overriding principle behind Betterment is simplicity.

For those who are interested in a “set it and forget it” approach to investing, Betterment is a solid choice, specializing in using low-cost ETFs to achieve diversity. Betterment will even automatically change your asset allocation.

Here is a rundown of Betterment:

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If you’re young and just starting your career, you might have a 401(k) full of funds that you may or may not have picked and because you’re spending all of your time making a name for yourself in your new job, you haven’t had the time to learn about investing for retirement. That’s certainly understandable given the competitive nature of today’s job market.

When you enrolled in your company’s 401(k) program, the administrators of the plan may have told you about target date funds or, as a result of a 2006 change in the law, they may have automatically enrolled you in one of these funds without asking.

What is a target date fund and is it the best use of your retirement funds?

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Another year, another Consumer Reports list (unfortunately, you’ll need a subscription to read it) of the best discount brokers. It’s always fun to see this ratings just to see the different brokers jockey for positioning on these lists. I don’t think you can really take much from it, since they are usually based on reader surveys (I like Smart Money’s list because they actually go and pretend to be customers, Consumer Reports does a little of that too but not to the same extent), and everyone’s tolerance for dissatisfaction and expectations for satisfaction is different..

They broke out their ratings list into two groups, a Discount/online list and a Full-service brokerage list. The Discount/online list had nine brokerages while the Full-service list had only four. I wouldn’t consider it an exhaustive list in either category but they do capture enough of each group and these are all familiar names.

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Some investment advisers call master limited partnerships or MLPs the best kept secret in the investing world. That’s probably a little overstated but there’s no doubt that MLPs can represent a great opportunity for investors to earn a consistent income along with some attractive tax advantages.

But if it were so easy, everybody would do it. That’s why there’s a lot to learn before putting money to work in MLPs offered in the market. Like any other investment, you should never invest in a product that you don’t understand so let’s dive in.

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At last count there are about 23,000 mutual funds and exchange traded funds (ETFs) available to investors in the U.S. Picking from among them for your portfolio can seem daunting. Do you pay attention to past performance? fund management? or something else to find a suitable growth vehicle for your money?

When picking funds, all else being equal (i.e. you’ve already decided on an asset class and investment account), the most important factor for actual returns is expense ratio. This is the annual fund operating expenses fee charged as a percentage of invested amounts in the fund.

Let’s look at how this affects your portfolio in detail.

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If you’re a do it yourself investor, you probably know a thing or two about stock selection but might not have given much thought to the tax implications of your investment actions. You should never pick investment products with the tax advantage as your primary reason. A quality investment product trumps tax advantages any day of the week but part of making money as an investor is to position it in the best way possible to keep the IRS’ hands off of it.

If all of your investment capital is kept in a single brokerage account there are likely better ways to make your money work harder for you. You may want to consider setting up a Roth IRA but let’s assume that you set up a traditional IRA that allows you to forego paying taxes on that money until you retire. Knowing that, we want to keep our realized gainers in or IRA and our unrealized gainers in our brokerage account. Here’s how to use it to keep more money out of the hands of Uncle Sam and in your account.

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Exchange traded funds or ETFs are to the investment market what the IPhone may be to the cell phone market. It’s one of the fastest growing, game changing products to hit the investment markets since the 401(k). There is an ETF for just about everything and what makes them so popular is their relative low cost. Never before could you invest in mutual fund like products at a fraction of the mutual fund cost.

For most retail investors, they know of some of the more popular ETFs like the SPDR S&P 500 or the SPDR Gold Shares with the really cool vault full of Gold in an undisclosed location in the UK. What they don’t know about is the less flashy but equally important bond ETFs. Fixed income may not be exciting to watch but a large portion of the gains in a long term portfolio come from fixed income products or dividend paying stocks. Here’s how to add Bond ETFs to your portfolio.

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Take a quick peek at the best CD rates and you’ll know that they’re abysmal right now. 1% for a 1 year CD? No more than 2% for a 5 year CD? Those are terrible yields.

Consider this – you can buy shares of blue chip companies with yields greater than 1-2%. You can start by looking at the dividend aristocrats but ultimately you can easily find safe companies who have stable cash flows capable of supporting dividend yields much greater than 1-2% (and you’re taxed at a much lower rate!).

In the end, both are financial tools that serve a specific purpose. Knowing which to use can be crucial in getting a little more out of your money.

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