What is the difference between a growth stock Roth IRA (no load, low fee) fund and a Franklin Income fund?

First, the Franklin fund has a sales charge ( front end up to 4.65% ) and a marketing 12b-1 fee ( 0.15% ) which probably means your financial advisor will probably get a bonus for selling the fund to you and you lose 4.8% of everything you put in right off the bat. That pretty much wipes it off the board for most investors. However, it's expense ratio of 0.65% is a nice value. You just loose too much off the top with the marketing/sales charges. Low fee fund and no load funds from Vanguard and Fidelity are usually preferred to something expensive like Franklin. However some brokers will have special pricing to some funds so you may not have to pay all the fees, of course this is also true of discount Vanguard and Fidelity funds ( Vanguard is known for their low fees and no load ). The Franklin fund has a 5 star Morningstar risk rating and a 4 star Morningstar overall rating so it's rated well. The fund has been around since 1948 and the current manager has been there since 1957. According to Yahoo Finance it has 53% bonds, 33% equity (stocks), 2% cash and 2% other, heaven knows where the other 10% is. It appears to invest in a lot of utilities (32%) but it's top holding in Texas Competitive Electric is just 2.41% so it's diversified out more than 50 ways possibly hundreds. Most of it's bond investments 45% are in B grade bonds which are considered highly speculative, only about 6% of the bonds are investment grade, the rest are junk bonds, note it is possible to gain from junk bonds, you just might lose some. Because it's mostly bonds with only 33% stocks, it's considered a conservative fund, whomever advised you to take that fund is concerned about economic troubles ahead however the high number of junk bonds may not offer much protection. A growth stock tends to be aggressive, investing on speculation more than value and in younger companies in hopes they will grow. The distinguishing factor is that they focus on companies that do not pay dividends which is a share of the profits back to the investor, all the gain is from buying at a low price and selling at a high price and all the valuations are indirect. Apple doesn't pay a dividend. An income fund invests in companies that are paying a dividend, these tend to be established successful companies that believe they have grown as much as they can and do not require the re-investment of all their profit in the growth of their business so they distribute some of the profit back to the investors. This simplifies the valuation of the stock to a matter of whether or not the company can continue paying the dividends. Microsoft, Intel, Coca-Cola and AT&T pay dividends. I think that a good fund manager can evaluate both types of stock and that with today's difficult times, established companies at a bargain isn't a bad idea so I would lean more towards the income fund in the near term but probably not Franklin due to the sales and marketing fees. A moderate fund ( close to 50/50 between equity and bonds ) may be a good choice till the European situation plays out. Many people will jump onto the growth fund on the premise that with more risk comes more gain, which is true to an extent, however there is a point where the increased risk will wipe you out in the long run and it's better to be well short of this point wherever it may be. Choosing the most risk isn't always the best choice. Look at the Sharpe Ratio of a fund as that's a measure of gain to risk ( under risk when you look the fund up on yahoo finance ), you want it to be high. A targeted fund with a year on it will vary it's risk from aggressive to conservative by the target year will change it's risk allocation from aggressive 80% stocks or higher to conservative 25% stocks by the retirement date, thereby handling the management of your investment completely but they do so at a high maintenance fee. It's possible to divide your portfolio between a low cost index fund which is 100% equity across the index and a low cost bond fund that's 100% investment grade bonds in the desired risk proportion but then you have to rebalance the funds on an annual basis and after major price changes like a market collapse to buy bargain stocks. This has the benefit that you can take glee at the bargain prices when-ever the market crashes and has the lowest possible fees but it is more work for you. A Roth IRA is just an account, you can invest in whatever mix of funds you'd like including the Franklin fund within an IRA. Many people like the Roth but at some level of income the Traditional becomes slightly better due to how marginal taxes work, that level is a lot lower than most people think ( like around a salary of $10k a year ) especially if you haven't been investing for a while. I wouldn't advise strictly a growth stock, it may be best to stay a little bit conservative till you're comfortable with investing and the risks involved.