I’ve been known to ponder two bags of snacks for an unreasonable amount of time. Choosing mutual funds for me is no picnic. There are thousands to choose from out there.

Of course, if you’re like most investors focused on retirement savings, this fund universe is limited by your employer. Your IRA is another story.

My portfolio has had some turnover in the past decade. I made my first picks by asking a wiser colleague and basically copying him.Then I put some money in a couple of sector funds– energy and wireless technology– only to decide a year later that I had no business making sector bets as a 25 year old who wanted to set and forget the small sum she managed to ferret away.

When I left my old employer, I didn’t bring my 401(k) with me. Their options are far superior to my current mix. But managing two accounts makes it tough to understand exactly how much I do have in various market sectors, or style boxes, as Morningstar likes to say.

So I turned to Morningstar’s Instant X-Ray, a tool that asks for your mutual fund tickers and the amount of your mix held in each fund.

The X-Ray’s findings?

On asset allocation:

Your portfolio is aggressive. An asset mix such as yours normally generates high long-term returns but can be very volatile. Financial planners typically recommend these types of mixes for investors who have investment horizons longer than 10 years, need high returns, and are comfortable with a high level of risk.

On portfolio style:

Your portfolio’s stock exposure is spread evenly across the market and includes a good mix of small, medium, and large companies, as well as a fairly even mix of conservatively priced value stocks and high-flying growth stocks. Compared to a benchmark with a similar investment style, you have very normal exposure to all stock types.

I was most excited by the smiley face given to my portfolio’s expense ratio, a reasonable 0.46 percent compared to 1.42 percent of a similarly weighted hypothetical portfolio.

Fees matter and index funds help keep mine pretty low. I do have some actively managed funds, especially in emerging markets.

This tool has another great feature to play with– a stock intersection tool that tells me whether a lot of my funds own the same companies. My largest holding is $430 in Berkshire Hathaway A Shares, Warren Buffett’s company.

I love mutual funds. If it weren’t for them, I would have had to pony up $108,900 to buy a single A share of stock.

About nine months ago, I opened up a couple of online brokerage accounts that were offering free Costco gift cards and $50 for stock-buying just for signing up and investing a little dough.

There they sit, my two empty, lonely accounts, waiting for me to make up my mind and buy something already.

I even have a group of friends who initiated an investment contest this year with the most lax of rules: All I had to do was make an investment of any kind and report its results quarterly. I could invest $5 or $5,000. One friend has a large stake in the Turkish shipping industry. Another has lot a “bundle” in biotech stocks. I could have put $100 in a money market and entered that.
I never did.
You see, I have investor paralysis. The index fund, boring is good, buy and hold philosophy is so deeply enmeshed in my being that I couldn’t begin to decide what to buy.

An ETF? An alternative energy company? Structured notes? A share or two of a blue chip?

I’m no speculator. I’m certainly not a stock picker. If I were to buy individual stocks, my method would be what I like and what I’ve read about in the news, with a little bit of number crunching mixed in. That’s no way to beat Buffett.
Besides, the market is motoring along these days and with my luck, I’d buy at the peak.

For those of you who do own individual stocks, how did you pick them? Did a broker do that for you? Do you turn to shouting stock sages? Do you only own stock of your employer? Do you pore over SEC filings?

Like all financial endeavors these days, finding the best place to open a Roth when nearly any money-related institution sells one

It’s the St. Paul art crawl tonight. I’m also attending an art sale that will benefit the block nurse program in my St. Paul neighborhood.

Most of the art on our walls at home are original pieces, purchased at the MCAD art sale or begged from my sister, an illustrator, my dad, who takes lovely nature photos, and my friends.

Occasionally I’ll wonder if my art has any value, aside from the value of getting to look at it every day.

Since I may be in the art buying mood tonight, I decided to research how to buy art as an investment.

Like any other purchase, research it before you make it and shop around.

This pamphlet from a Scottish arts organization says to buy art you like “in case the investment works out.”

This story from Marketplace Money talks about the cheaper side of the art business. Among the tips: Prints are one way to make your way into the art market. It’s also appropriate to ask for the price. After all, you don’t need to be an artist to be starving. We all have a budget.

James Surowiecki of the New Yorker writes about investing in art purely for financial reasons, not for decoration.

Yeah, that title isn’t terribly interesting. But the sites suggested regularly by readers typically are.

Like if you’re a teen interested in stocks. Or anyone with a teen-level knowledge of