Chasing Dollars

While I concentrate on beefing up my emergency savings and paying off wedding and honeymoon expenses, I don't have a lot of time for investment research.  Overall, my investment strategy is simple: I'll take a lot of risk now and trade it for greater returns over my remaining career period.  I plan to retire sometime around 2040, so I have a ways to go and time is on my side.  However, I need the next 6, 9, 12 months to myself so I can make sure our current soft assets are where they need to be.

But I don't want to lose that time in terms of investment returns.

What was I to do?  A friend suggested target retirement funds: mutual funds that are managed by professionals that automatically allocate the holdings of the fund based around a target retirement date.  They manage reallocations, dividend reinvestment, and other things.  All the investor does is buy shares.  This seemed like a perfect solution for me–at least temporarily–since I would be able to invest reasonably intelligently by piggybacking on someone else's efforts during the period in which I don't have time to do the proper research myself.

So upon receiving my old 401(k) rollover check last March, and upon the establishment of my own business' Keogh plan, I decided to invest in Fidelity's Freedom 2040 fund.  Yahoo Finance has a pretty good analysis of the fund here.  It has low expenses, is managed pretty well, and seems to be doing OK.  Since I have an existing relationship with Fidelity, I paid no commissions to purchase shares in the fund.

As far as performance, according to Microsoft Money, my investment in the fund has returned over 15% over the past three months.  Of course, it was a good period in the market, but I still think the results are more than adequate for now. 

When I have more time to do a good analysis of my portfolio, I may shift away from this fund, but right now I'm pleased with the decision.
What are your thoughts on these funds?  Any gotchas?