I have a 401K plan at work into which I make regularly payments. I also have a 401K for the last company I worked at, which is just sitting there, fluctuating with the economy.

I must admit that I don't spend much, if any time, looking at the amounts or trying to decide which funds to allocate the money into. As I start thinking about retirement (long way off, but its good to plan), I decided to take a look at how they've been doing, especially the one from the previous company since it has the largest amount in it.

The plans are with Fidelity, and they have good handy stuff online to help plan, view history, etc. Just to get a bird's eye view, I took a look at how it did quarterly for the last few years, dollar amount and % increase/decrease. Generally, I did better than the S&P 500, so I guess its not too bad.

I'd like to learn more about investing, so I can make decisions about how to allocate the money. Do any of you know general guidelines about investing?

Fidelity has a good number of choices where to allocate the money. I'd rather not research all of them, so I was wondering if anybody knew generally which of these are good categories to check into allocating money towards:

Large Cap Growth
Large Cap Blend
Large Cap Value
Mid Cap
Small Cap
International
Blended
Bond/Managed: Stable Value
Bond/Managed: Income
Bond/Managed: Short-Term Investments

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B.Howes
Framingham, MA