Shareholders of the money market funds at The Reserve that broke the buck earlier this year are suing the company, USAToday reports. Investors have two complaints: they're suing Reserve, accusing them of investing in investments too risky for a money market fund. And they're suing TD Ameritrade for describing the Yield Plus fund as "just like a money market."

They've also started a Yahoo! group with the name of the ticker RYPQX, to commiserate and strategize. Diana Henriquez of the New York Times reported this week that the fund actually broke the buck five hours earlier than everyone thought, but on the same day--September 15.

Unless the shareholders can prove the investments broke the technical rules for money market mutual funds, I don't think they stand much of a chance on the first count. On the SEC's website, there's a discussion of money market mutual funds. The SEC warns that the funds may redeem investments at less than $1 per $1 invested and "typically invest in government securities, certificates of deposit, commercial paper of companies, or other highly liquid and low-risk securities." The Reserve broke the buck because they invested in the commercial debt of Lehman Bros., which collapsed.

On the other hand, if anyone described this as just like a money market fund, I think they're in trouble. The shareholders weren't protected just like they were in a money fund.

Investors are comfortable with money market mutual funds again--after the panic this fall after The Reservefund family broke the buck and announced they would have to give investors less money back than they put in. October saw investors add about 4% to their holdings in both taxable and non-taxable money market funds, the Investment Company Institute says. And last week investors added about $33 billion to the category. Back in September we took out nearly $90 billion.

The Fed, meanwhile, isn't taking any chances. Even though they say they think they won't have to backstop any more money market mutual funds, they announced this week that they're extending their program to do just that. The program was supposed to end on December 18, but will run to April 30.

Does your fund have the coverage?

It's hard to say. I'd really like to see a comprehensive list from the Fed about which funds are eligible and which did or did not opt in. Instead they offer a highly technical explanation.

Meanwhile, fund families have been announcing and explaining their participation with mixed clarity.

Vanguard, Fidelity are in. TIAA-CREF has two funds in, one fund ineligible. Oppenheimer is in and does the best job of explaining that the Fed won't cover investments made after September 19. Way to get people to put money back in, Fed.

Vanguard also explains how much this will cost: an upfront fee of 0.01%, or $1 per $10,000 of net assets for three months. (It's unclear how much the extension will cost, however.) And the program only comes in if the value falls below 99 and half cent per share. So, basically, you've got a half cent deductible. That means that money market mutual funds will have slightly lower returns--but it's still too good of a deal to pass up.

A while back I wrote about how there was talk of an emergency measure about seniors who lost money in the market this year and I mentioned that anyone who's retired shouldn't have much money in stocks anyway. A reader wrote in asking if they shouldn't put money in the market, where should it go?

The general answer is that as you get older, you're supposed to move a greater portion of your retirement savings into safer investments like bonds. The old saw is that whatever your age, invest that percent of your retirement money in bonds (or bond funds). So, a young 25-year-old would have a quarter of their retirement savings in bonds, but a 50-year-old would have half and an 80-year-old would have only 20% in the stock market.

For the average investor the simplest way to do this a relatively new, but increasingly popular product called Target Date Retirement Funds or Lifecycle Funds. These funds come pre-packaged for a set retirement date and are available in five or 10 year intervals.

So, Vanguard has funds for those who retired in 2005, those planning to quit work in 2010, 2015, etc. Many fund companies just have balanced funds--which mix stocks and bonds--and come in a variety of balances between stocks and bonds. Again, the older you are, the more conservative you should be. You're looking for something that's called maybe capital preservation (protect my money) or income earning(I want to make money off bonds and dividends--just safer stuff.).

Sadly, even investors who got into one of those funds got clobbered this year, too. The average target date fund for someone retiring between 2010 and 2014 lost 28% this year, Morningstar says. Morningstar says some Oppenheimer funds in this category lost 49% this year. Imagine being two years from retirement and losing nearly half your money--after you invested in a fund for someone just your age! And on top of everything else, Oppenheimer charges a sales charge to get into the Oppenheimer Transition 2010 fund. I have to wonder whether the fund really had investments suitable to that age group.

So, I have to take back what I said earlier, there's plenty of reason seniors who did everything right got viciously wiped out in the market along with the rest of us.

Because mutual fund assets have fallen so much this year, the solid investors who have stuck it out now, on top of everything else, may have to pay more in fees. According to the mutual fund trade group the Investment Company Institute, stock mutual fund assets have fallen by nearly one-quarter by September. And I'd assume that it's actually much worse as of today.

Lipper told Investment News that because assets are down, they expect fees to go up. The reasoning is simple: funds' fixed costs are going to be divided among fewer investment dollars (and perhaps shareholders).

When assets last fell after the dot-com bubble, equity fund expense ratios rose about 0.06 or 0.07 percentage points in a couple studies by the Investment Company Institute. We've already seen fund companies chopping staff to trim expenses. In preview of what we may see more of, Putnam merged some funds and stopped its (expensive) team management approach.

Of course, there's one kind of fund that isn't going to have troubles, I bet. That's the broad-based index fund category. Even though it's been a vicious year, for most of these big funds and at the major fund families, cost are minimal.