Mutual funds have long been one of the more popular forms of investing and retirement planning for Americans. One reason for this is because of how simple they are to get involved. You really don't even need to know about the market to make an investment.

All you need to do is choose a risk level or basic grouping for your mutual fund. You may choose intermediate risk with moderate expected growth and gains for the majority of your money, with a smaller share in a high risk, high growth mutual fund for example.           

However, as Robert Kiyosaki has famously put out to the public, along with a variety of other analysts and experts, mutual funds may not be all that they are cracked up to be. That's because mutual funds come with some heavy charges and fees to be managed. All of these fees can add up to major losses of your profit over time.

If you lose 2.5% of your 8% or 10% annual gain, then over your lifetime you could lose up to 80% of your total potential gains. This is an extraordinary amount that will truly limit the growth of your investment and your successful retirement planning.

You can still avoid getting into the dirty work of stock trading by utilizing services such as index funds, which buy all of the stocks in a particular group. For one, these often outperform carefully managed mutual funds! For another, fees are drastically reduced so that you retain the lion's share of your profits and growth.

That's a system that even Kiyosaki could get on board with! So if you want to make smarter investments but don't want to worry about self management and making your own trades, consider choosing an index fund over a mutual fund.