My friends were recommending Vanguard. Sadly, it's not available at my location.

This. virtually all "fancy" funds do worse than the Dow jones index.

You probably mean S&P index, which is what most index funds index against.

Dave Ramsey recommends mutual funds with higher fees but that consistently beat the S&P 500. I have some money in some that I found like that, but still probably half in index funds.