How to go about investing in mutual fund?

I'm married and 25 and my wife and I both contribute generously to our retirement funds and have no debt except mortgate. We would like to begin investing in mutual funds to build up more savings. I'm interested in the Vanguard funds but may also be interested in other families of funds also. My brother who's an accountant said that I should just use my Scottrade account to buy the funds directly instead of opening accounts with Vanguard, etc so that it would make it easier to flip between funds and pick up others in any fund family. The only downfall of this is that I was hoping to set up automatic monthly deposits into the funds and not sure I can do it through Scottrade. Any advice?

I'd get a Vanguard IRA, if you like the Vanguard funds, and follow your own plan.

The disadvantage to buying funds through an outfit like Scottrade is the fees they charge -- OUTRAGEOUS! It's not "$8 a trade" for purchasing funds, it's quite a bit higher, and if you pop in and out of them, you increase your own costs via the trade fees, AND you increase the costs for those who stay in their funds long-term. Mutual funds are for long-term savings, not trading in and out of them like stocks.

If you go to Vanguard's website, you can download the forms to start the IRA.

Transypat,

Vanguard is certainly a good way to go based on their history of low operating costs and fees, no loads, and good performance. And unlike most of their funds that have a $3,000 minimum initial investment, their Star Fund can be acquired with just $1,000.
Also, the Lazy Portfolios (http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/lazy-portfolios-sparkle-07-new/story.aspx?guid=%7B73F4BC3A%2DD0EF%2D4BFA%2D9698%2D01D8DA27C91A%7D&dist=morenews) are constructed of Vanguard funds, which may be of interest to you.

Regarding Scottrade, their list of No Transaction Fee/No Load funds contains over 1,000 mutual funds (I bought Marsico 21st Century here, MXXIX). So you don't have to pay anything to buy into them. And Scottrade has over 10,000 funds with a $17 Transaction Fee (I bought Permanent Portfolio here, PRPFX). So there's different avenues within Scottrade. I find their website frustrating to navigate through - it takes a lot of clicking, hunting and pecking to finally get to their mutual fund lists (I guess I should write to them about improving that).

So you have the convenience of having your investments at one location (Scottrade) but possibly having to pay Transaction Fees, or as Puck pointed out, you can get Vanguard Funds (or any company's funds) directly from said company and avoid purchase/transaction fees.

Best of luck,
Rookie