The simplified prospectus is the document that tells you everything you need to know about your mutual fund. It includes the fund’s objectives for income, growth, foreign exposure, what it invests in, risk level, purchases and redemptions, fees and distributions. Think of it as getting the low-down before being set up on a blind date. You want the details — all of them. (Hmmm… maybe men should come with a prospectus.)

A systematic withdrawal plan (SWP) is an easy way to tap into your holdings. (Like getting a golden egg on a regular basis.) Each month, fund units are redeemed and the proceeds are automatically deposited into your bank account. How much you take depends on your needs and objectives. In general, you’ll want to draw down enough funds to fulfill your current income requirements, without exhausting the money prematurely. (Translation: You don’t want to tire out the goose.) To do this, you’ll want to ensure that your portfolio is carefully managed and constructed.

Standard deviation is a measure of volatility. It indicates how much an investment’s price has tended to vary from its average price over a certain number of years. The usual calculation takes 36 months of data and, for each month, determines how much the fund varied from its average performance. For example, consider a fund with a 10% compound annual return and a 5.0 standard deviation. This means the returns generally ranged between 5% and 15%. Some publications convert numeric standard deviations to ratings, such as high, medium or low.

Want to impress at your next cocktail party? The next time someone starts talking about their mutual fund, ask something like, “How’s the beta on that baby?” You’ll get bonus points (and you’ll impress them more) if you actually know what it means, so listen up: Beta indicates whether a mutual fund was more or less volatile than the broad market in which it primarily invests. A 1.0 beta indicates that a mutual fund matched the market. Betas for index funds, for example, are typically 1.0. In general, betas are below 1.0 for less volatile funds and above 1.0 for more volatile ones.

“She’s just a 3 dressed up as a 9.” Great lyrics for a song, but in the real world, rating people on their physical appearance is considered pretty catty. But a points system comes in really handy when you want to know more about a fund manager. Enter the Sharpe Measure. This figure correlates returns and volatility to rate a fund manager’s effectiveness compared with the performance of a relatively risk-free investment like Treasury bills. The higher the score, the better.