Federal investors have taken to the new automatic pilot L funds in a big way. The set up your investments based on your time horizon, and adjust them as you get closer to spending the money. They take a lot of risk out of the investing, because the mix is set, and then constantly adjusted, by professionals. But some financial planners think the L funds are just too conservative.

We asked financial planner, Arthur Stein, for his take on the L fund:

There's nothing magical about them, except people like them because they feel like someone is managing the allocation of their investments. And it's like instead of having a financial planner do it, you're having the people who run the L funds do it. Of course a disadvantage is... that the people who are doing it don't know you. They don't know what you really need and they are a more conservative investment than some people might have on their own.

They aren't magic, they aren't guaranteed, and in many instances, may be too conservative.

When it comes to investing in the TSP, it is possible to be too cautious.

Your TSP portfolio should have both stocks and bonds, right? And then there's the super-safe G fund with its guaranteed Treasury securities.

Financial planner Arthur Stein says "historically, stocks have outperformed bonds in the United States by a significant amount, and 'past performance is no guarantee of future performance' but I don't really know of anyone who thinks that relationship is going to change. So we would expect to see the C and the S funds outperform the G and the F fund."

So according to this pro, you can be too conservative if you have too much in the F fund, or even the super-safe G fund. There are times, according to Stein, when being conservative is actually very risky.

The Thrift Savings Plan in the long range way to accumulate wealth for retirement, but it's possible to borrow from the TSP and a lot of people do it, especially for the purchase of a home or to put kids through college.

The fact that you can do it doesn't mean you should do it.

Financial planner, Arthur Stein, has this take:

What I really hate to see is someone borrowing from it when they need to pay off credit cards or something because they've mismanaged their finances, or even borrowing to put a kid through college. That is not a good idea. There are lots of ways for your kids to pay for college and nearly every one of them is better than you taking money out of your retirement plan.

So it looks like there is never a "good time" and a good enough reason to borrow money from your TSP. Especially when the idea is to reduce credit card debt that you might have avoided in the first place.

Financial advisor Steve Harvey says if you invest in index funds, what goes down will go up again, and the downside isn't necessarily a bad thing!

Just as there are "fifty ways to leave your lover" there must be a hundred and fifty ways to lose your shirt in the stock market. One of the best ways to lose a bundle, or your nest egg, is to chase returns: buying high, when you think you're buying into a hot property; and selling low, when you dump a stock you think is in the tank.

So we asked Harvey what he thinks about so-called "momentum investors" and what they are:

Individual companies do not have to come back, but if you're investing in the indexes, where you're investing in a group of companies, yes they do. And one of the things that I get the biggest kick out of is people who say they're momentum investors. In other words, they're buying a stock as it's going up, and I mean... "fill up your car everytime they raise the price of gas." You (should) look for when things go down.

So that's one thing you don't want to be: a momentum investor.

Diversity is the new buzzword. It's the name of the game. And no where is that more true than in investing.

We talked with financial planner, John Bernards about the importance for diversity in investing, and why people should be in a variety of funds.

Try to look at ...the allocation of all the funds. You want to make sure you're completely diversified among the different sectors of the TSP. In terms of an accumulation standpoint, you want to try to get the highest returns you can. You want to have a higher portion of your money in the C-fund and the S-fund and the I-fund, but you do want some exposure to the F and G as well.

Just as people want to cover the waterfront, so do you want to cover the stock market. That way you can ride one fund up while the other's going down.