Every year I eagerly renew my membership at Sam's Club, the warehouse chain owned by Wal-Mart. My husband and I can spend hours at Sam's, loading up on bulk paper for our home printer and super-sized packs of rice cakes for our son or rummaging for the latest discounted Disney video. At Sam's I don't mind the concrete floors or the no-frills decor if it means I can save some bucks. I don't mind that I have little, if any, contact with a salesclerk except at the checkout. I'm perfectly able to get what I need for myself. It's the American way to shop now.

And it's fast becoming the way many people are buying mutual funds. With no financial planner, insurance agent or broker to steer you this way or that, you can click on to a number of Internet sites or visit a discount brokerage office and invest yourhard-earned money for yourself.

Financial planners or investment advisers are useful and even necessary for many people. In fact, the Investment Company Institute found in a survey last year that 77 per cent of the money in mutual funds was invested on the advice of broker dealers, insurance agents or financial planners or through a 401(k) retirement plan.

Frankly, with more than 7,400 mutual funds to choose from, many people need the help in figuring out what fund is right for them. But for too long, we consumers have lacked the skills, the information or both to choose investments for ourselves. Now we don't. Mutual-fund supermarkets are in concept much like a Sam's Club, but instead of picking up giant jars of salad dressing, you can sell or buy thousands of mutual funds. These one-stop supermarkets are bringing to the mass market a low-cost way to invest in mutual funds, plus access to a ton of easy-to-digest research.``Supermarkets make it very simple,'' said John Markese, president of the AmericanAssociation of Individual Investors. A typical fund supermarket can make fund purchases easy by packaging them into one account with one monthly statement. In many cases, you have access to hundreds of no-load funds -- meaning funds that carry nosales fee--without having to wade through a mountain of paperwork and prospectuses.

The companies often charge no transaction fees. Investors don't have to pay because the funds do. Instead of consumers paying a fee, the investment companies charge the fund companies for virtual shelf space in their supermarket.

``All else being equal, you should go the no-load, no-transaction-fee route,'' said Julie Kever, vice president for fund marketing at Charles Schwab & Co., whose OneSource fund supermarket is the industry's leader.Still, some financial planners argue that this investment avenue isn't for neophytes. Inexperienced investors could get themselves in trouble by picking a fund that isn't right for them. Worse, without proper advice, they may be tempted to tradein and out of funds more often then they should.``I think that's the bias of a group of people that thinks everybody needs a financial adviser,'' Markese said. ``I don't think mutual-fund supermarkets are creating an environment where individual investors can walk in and do things that they shouldn't.'' When you're going to buy an expensive stereo, you should read up on the subject, compare models and brands, and go to the least-expensive outlet to make the purchase. Mutual funds need be no different.

Mostly, what fund supermarkets can do is give you the ability to do your own investment shopping, which ultimately empowers you to take control over your own money.

Site for corporate campus

One of the largest credit card issuers in the US, Capital One Financial Corp, is searching for a site to build a corporate campus that would provide office space for thousands of new workers, writes Washington Post.``We have been growing like crazy,'' said Capital One spokeswoman Diana Don. ``We have been addingcustomers at a rate of about 15,000 per day.'' The company is focusing its search in the close-in Northern Virginia suburbs, particularly in Tysons Corner, McLean, Falls Church, Merrifield, Alexandria and Arlington, according to a solicitation sent last week to real estate developers and brokers. ``We have been very successful in Virginia,'' Don said. ``For us, it has been a really good location as far as recruiting people.'' Capital One wants 1 million to 1.5 million square feet of office space at the new multi-building campus.

The company wants to pick a site by the end of the year and move in its first wave of employees by October 2001, said William Craig, part of the team of brokers at Jones Lang LaSalle Ltd. that has been working with Capital One.

The new campus would be one of the area's largest corporate complexes. The America Online Inc. corporate campus in Loudoun County has 1.2 million square feet of space under construction or completed; when it is built out, it could have as much as 2.5million square feet of space on 150 acres. Also in Loudoun County, MCI WorldCom Inc. has begun work on a 1.3 million-square-foot campus that could accommodate 4,000 workers by the year 2001. Self-contained corporate campuses, which are usually made up of several buildings surrounded by greenery and plenty of parking, have become the suburban office choice for companies big enough to afford them.Besides acres of cubicles, they often include recreational facilities, coffee bars and whatever other amenities the company believes will attract and retain employees.