I have written about target date funds before, when Vanguard extended their longest target date year out to 2060. These are excellent for individuals with small retirement accounts.
Target date funds are essentially a balanced fund that gets more conservative as you near retirement. This all happens without you having to do anything at all! Many of the funds are too conservative for my taste though. As people live and work longer, and have assets to draw outside of retirement funds, it makes sense to increase risk tolerance given income and assets outside of any single account. The easy way to do this is just to add 5-10 years to your expected retirement year and selecting that fund.
Target date funds are also available in the ETF wrapper, which may save money on taxes if you are using a non-retirement account to save for retirement (hey, not a terrible idea!). It is important to remember that each fund provider will have a different mix of asset classes and different strategies for the "glide path". Large fund families will likely use their own funds, while some may generously use other companies funds. Look carefully at the fees, particularly "acquired fund expenses" which are expenses of the underlying funds that may be hidden from the advertised expense.
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