Hi Tim, thanks for your question!
Well, Index Funds are a type of Mutual Fund (which means they purchase more than just one individual financial asset).
The main difference I point out is how they invest (Active or Passive).
The Mutual Funds I criticize are actively managed. This means they have a team of people who will try to pick the best stocks (and as you can see from my letter, the vast majority fails to beat the market).
Index Funds are passively managed. This means they don’t try to pick stocks. They just look at an Index (for example the S&P 500 Index which looks at the top 500 companies in the US) and own every stock in that index. Because there’s so little “buying and selling”, a big bonus is that an index fund has tiny, tiny fees.
If all you want to do is talk to an advisor, I think you can do the same thing my girlfriend did. Which is just call Vanguard and ask them all your questions.
