<human>: I'm trying to balance getting an index fund versus expense ratios and sifting through all Franklin Templeton's random mutual funds available.  A lot of their funds are near or over 1% and none of them are explicitly index funds.

[The fund list](

I've mostly looked at the growth, value, and blend so far since I imagine that is the closest I'm getting to index funds, though some of the sector or global funds may be worthwhile for a more diversified portfolio.  The question is, should I add the expense ratio as a factor into choosing my fund or just get something that looks like a decent index?  Dynatech (FKDNX) has the lowest ER among the growth value and blend categories at 0.89%.  The large cap equity fund (FLCAX) on the other hand has an ER of (1.25% gross, 1.25% net, I haven't really figured out how/why they are different numbers).

The TSP seems stupid easy by comparison (previous job), not many choices, but you can't really go wrong (so long as you aren't all on G, and even then you're beating inflation).  Just choose some and go.

I suppose I could also add a 10-20% bond portion to take advantage of market down turns, but a decent stock fund is higher on my priority list since that is where I expect to have most of the gains.  If I do add bonds, I just don't want to lose money to inflation basically.

I don't think I'm terribly risk adverse, though I haven't been through a crash yet.  I'd like to think I'm the kinda guy that would sell bonds to buy stock in a downturn.  For comparison's sake, I was 100% in C (large cap index) in TSP, so I was hoping for something similar for the new 401k.

Can you provide a brief overview of the text?
<bot>: Just get large cap fund that looks like an index or should I choose a mutual fund with a lower expense ratio that looks half decent?