Never buy mutual funds. The big reason is that you pay taxes every year on them. ETFs grow tax free. Its like an IRA with no rules. You just buy SPY and forget it. Your money grows tax free with extremely low fees and you don’t pay taxes until you sell them.
With Mutual funds you have higher fees and then you have to deal with a 1099 every year. Then you have to figure out your cost basis. What a pain. Plus the fact that you have a day delay before you can get out. Oh, and if you look at a bunch of mutual funds (not all), they have ETFs inside them. So they are just hiding their ETF inside a mutual fund and still charging you the ETF fees and the mutual fund fees.
What about ETFs that pay dividends? You have to claim those dividends as income, and then you have to pay taxes on them.