f you'd rather inflict bodily damage upon yourself than read a prospectus, you might find bliss in safe, simple and profitable investments requiring not a nanosecond of thought or second-guessing, once purchased.

Do such vehicles for the investment-challenged and investment-phobic really exist?

Well, yes, sort of. But first, consider what you're losing by taking such a brain-dead investment stance. You don't have to enroll in an MBA program or pour over yen futures charts to have a sound investment strategy. Simply shake off your passive tendencies and learn how to handle whatever nest egg you've accumulated.

OK, so you still want a fix. The following investments are as close to the robotic as you can get. Investments don't get any safer than these, in that the principal amount invested is virtually certain to return to you or your heirs intact. You'll earn a return better than the paltry sums currently paid to passbook savers.

Like all other investments, these plain vanilla ones do carry some risk. The risk with these is that inflation will erode the value of your return and your principal.

The moral: No investment, however simple and safe, is perfect or risk-free at all times under all conditions. Even investors on autopilot should keep their hands close to the wheel.

Certificates of deposit from federally-insured banks and thrifts are exceptionally secure. Essentially, they're IOUs whose principal is guaranteed by the U.S. government. When you buy a CD, you're giving a bank or a savings and loan a sum of money for a period of time - three months, six months, a year or more. In return, the bank pays you interest at a fixed rate. Through the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) and the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corp. (FSLIC), the government promises that even if your bank or thrift institution fails, your principal, up to $100,000 an account, will be returned.

Banks issue CDs in minimum amounts that vary from $100 to $1,000 and impose no fees on their purchase. Banks, however, usually penalize the early withdrawal of your funds through a reduction in interest.

All the interest paid is taxable. After taxes, CD interest probably will beat the inflation rate, but not by much. Returns on one-year CDs currently average about 5.2 percent, although some banks are paying as much as 6.45 percent. Because CD rates are not regulated, and federally-insured institutions are located throughout the country, it may make sense to shop geographically for the highest rates. Brokerage firms also sell insured bank CDs. You can start by using Decision Center's Bank Rate Monitor fare tracker to find the best rate.

Here's what you ought to ask before buying a CD:

How often will the bank pay interest: quarterly, semiannually or at maturity? Can the interest be reinvested?

What happens to the deposit when the CD matures? Some banks roll a matured CD into a new one of a similar term. Some mail you a check. Some credit your checking account. Some allow you to choose the method of payment. If you really want to forget about your CD money, have the bank keep rolling it over into new CDs.

Reward: The main one here is that you know for sure what your return will amount to and, if you're the planning type you could plan around it.

Risk: Interest rates may rise sharply before your CD matures. That costs you the opportunity to earn more on your money than you're earning.

These are Uncle Sam's sacred, direct obligations.

T-bills, as they are called, represent short-term loans to the government, maturing in three months, six months or one year. They are issued in minimum denominations of $10,000, with $1,000 increments. Yields on T-bills are currently anemic and mainly attractive to investors with huge but temporary cash balances. It wasn't always so; in periods of raging inflation, T-bill rates more than compensated for the decline in the dollar's buying power. Keep that in mind if inflation rears its visage again.

Notes usually pay more generously. They're intermediate-term securities that mature in two to 10 years. The two- to three-year notes are issued in $5,000 denominations; the four to 10-year notes are issued in $1,000 denominations.

Treasury securities may be purchased through a brokerage firm or directly from one of the 36 Federal Reserve banks or branches around the country, in person or by mail. No fees are charged when buying directly from the government. The process is reasonably easy, even though the paperwork is about as user-friendly as, say, a tank manual.

The easiest way to buy directly from the government is through the Treasury Direct System. Get the forms from a Federal Reserve Bank or branch. You'll fill out a form to open a Treasury Direct Account (which can be linked to your bank account so that interest payments will be direct-deposited), as well as a form called a tender that is used to enter a noncompetitive bid.

A noncompetitive bid means you're willing to buy securities at whatever price and yield is determined by competitive bidders at the auction. Fill out the form, which asks for the face amount of the securities you want to buy, the maturity, your name, address and Social Security number, your daytime phone number and your Treasury Direct Account number.

Of course, if you're doing this for the first time, you won't have a Treasury Direct Account number. To get one, you'll need to provide a voided check from your bank or thrift and either a W-9 withholding form (available from banks) or a signed statement certifying that you are not subject to backup withholding tax. Mail all this with your check and soon you'll receive a statement of the holdings in your new Treasury Direct Account. The hard part is over.

All that and more is explained in detail at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York's Treasury Direct Basic Information Web site. The site also lists phone numbers to call for yields based on the latest auction results.

Since you're a buy-and-hold investor, once the T-bill or note matures all you then have to do is indicate on your bid that it be rolled over into another security of similar maturity. You can buy Treasuries with maturities that match your need for future income, or you can buy a two-year note (not too short, not too long) and keep rolling it over. Two-year notes currently yield about 6.5 percent, not too much below the yield on long-term maturities that expose you to much greater risk. (But then, you don't really want to hear about yield curves, do you?) They pay interest twice a year.

The interest on T-bills and notes is subject to federal income tax. It is exempt, however, from state and local taxes. T-bill interest is calculated as a discount from the purchase price. If you're looking for easy investing, don't bother to learn how yields are calculated from discount rates. The government will tell you that. But if you insist on an explanation, check the Federal Reserve Bank of New York's Estimating Yields on Treasury Securities.

Reward: There's nothing safer than Treasury securities. By definition, a Treasury security carries no risk. The risk factor on all other investments is determined by comparison with Treasury yields. Barring the collapse of civilization, you'll get back your principal in full.

Risk: Still, inflation can shrink the value of Treasury securities, and that's where risk enters the picture. Will the money you finally collect from the Treasury, principal plus reinvested interest, buy what it would have bought at the time you invested? Maybe and maybe not. More than one government has "repaid" its debt by inflating it into near worthlessness.

Treasury bonds, in contrast to bills and notes, are long term. They're brought on the market with maturities up to 30 years. Zero-coupon T-bonds are special versions, artifacts of the securities industry's ingenuity. The zero coupons pay no periodic interest. Instead, like savings bonds, they're sold at a deep discount from their face value, which they fetch at maturity. You can pick the maturity of your choice from all the zero coupons traded in the market.

Zeros were devised by investment banking firms that purchase Treasury bonds and "strip" them of the coupons, or the rights to receive the interest payments. Then the firms sell the coupons, the periodic interest payments, to one investor or group, and the coupon-less principal amounts are sold to another investor or group.

Salomon Brothers calls its zeros CATS (Certificates of Accrual on Treasury Securities); Merrill Lynch calls theirs TIGRs (Treasury Investment Growth Receipts). Zeros are contrived from Treasury bonds that are non-callable, which means that the government cannot force their early redemption to save itself a bit of interest expense.

If you need a steady stream of income, buying the interest coupons may make sense. Most individuals, however, invest in zero-coupon principal securities to pay for something in the future. For example, if you want to obtain $10,000 to help meet a college tuition bill 15 years from now, you could buy a zero now for $3,300 or so that will guarantee you exactly $10,000 in 15 years. The actual price varies from day to day, and one seller's price at any given time can be noticeably less than another's. So shop around or urge your broker to press for a better price than the quoted offering price.

Reward: A zero, like a CD, tells you precisely what you're going to receive and when.

Risks: The chief drawback is the same as a CD's; until your zero matures, you're locked into an interest payment that will look stingy if interest rates rise, and might be eroded by inflation. Also, you must calculate the phantom interest that accumulates in a zero-coupon bond each year, and pay federal income tax on it, even though you may not actually receive the cash for years.

In Keogh plans or Individual Retirement Accounts, however, the tax remains deferred, making zero coupons attractive for the non-accountant non-investor who is trying to finance retirement.

Cities, states and other governmental bodies borrow money by selling bonds to investors. The interest payments made to bondholders by non-federal, or "municipal," issuers incur no federal income taxes. Investment companies buy big numbers of bonds, package the ownership of them as shares in municipal bond funds, and sell the shares to other investors. That dilutes the damage done if any single issue defaults, or fails to repay.

The tax exemption on interest paid on the bonds, channeled to investor shareholders in bond funds, makes them appealing to people in high-income tax brackets. Some bonds are also exempt from state income taxes, when the owners of the bonds or funds are residents of the taxing state. In New York state, "triple tax-exempt" bonds and bond funds, free of all federal, New York state and New York City income taxation, tempt tax-averse investors.

The interest rate on municipals looks low. It's not, considering the tax break. For someone whose income is taxed at the federal rate of 28 percent, a 5 percent municipal bond yield matches a 6.94 percent taxable yield. In other words, to earn as much after taxes as the 5 percent muni pays, you'd have to earn 6.94 percent taxable. A New York state investor, who may be subject to a state income tax of up to 7.5 percent, would have to earn 7.51 percent in taxable income to match the 5 percent muni yield.

The no-brainers among municipal funds are tax-exempt money market funds. These are more like parking places for cash than like investments. The yields are low because the funds buy low-risk, short-term, easily-marketable notes issued by municipal borrowers. As with other investments in fixed-income securities, the risk increases as the maturity, or payback time, stretches into the future. The longer the time, the greater the probability that interest rates will increase to make the yield you've locked in seem poor.

Usually, higher yields mean higher risk. Governments, like everybody else, must collect money to pay their creditors. Some revenues and some localities are safer than others, and the poorer credit risks must compensate investors for greater risk by paying more. In the Great Depression, many municipalities did default on their debt.

Defaults still happen on occasion. (One of the more highly-publicized instances in recent times was in Orange County, Calif., an affluent Southern California county that's home to Disneyland and whose county seat is Anaheim.) Agencies such as Standard & Poor's, Moody's and Fitch's rate muni issues on credit quality. Muni bond fund prospectuses show the credit ratings of bonds in the funds' portfolios. Some muni bond funds invest mainly in bonds that are insured by municipal bond insurance companies. In exchange for slightly lower returns, an investor in insured funds gets assurance of repayment should the governmental bond issuer default.

Read the fund prospectus before you invest: Check sales charges and fund expenses, the quality of the bonds in the portfolio and the term of the bonds. This is slightly more demanding than a pure autopilot investment. If you're really cautious, buy an insured fund with the highest credit ratings.

Reward: High yield from tax exempt status says it all.

Risks: No different from the two major risks in all fixed-income investments: the credit risk, or the risk the borrower won't pay, and the market risk, which is the risk that interest rates will rise to shrink the value of your investment.

Most financial advisers treat GICs with scorn because investors who cautiously chose these conservative investment vehicles over the past 15 years have eaten the dust of stock market investors. GICs are similar to CDs in that a bank or, in most cases, an insurance company guarantees to pay you a specified rate of interest over a period of time, usually one to five years. The interest paid is usually a percentage point or two above the prime rate. The contracts are backed by the bank or insurance company that issued them. Much of the money raised by insurance companies has gone into real estate lending.

Most GICs are sold as part of company-sponsored retirement plans, where they are one of several investment options offered.

Rewards: A GIC parallels the CD in simplicity. You pay your money, you get your interest payments. The interest rates depend partly on the issuing institution's eagerness to attract and lend out money. Risks and downsides: The interest payments aren't that great -- consider that the insurance company must invest your money in higher-yielding investments so that it can afford to pay you and still earn a profit.

Risk: It's possible, especially in the case of insurers, that the institution will be unable to repay your principal. Before buying a GIC, check its financial ratings through one of the nation's rating services like Standard & Poor's , whose ratings are offered through the Insurance News Network, to determine the capitalization and creditworthiness of your insurer.

This is a simple insurance product: You make a single payment (minimums range from $2,500 to $10,000) to an insurer. The company pays you a fixed rate of interest. That's it. The money grows tax-deferred (a unique quirk of insurance products that industry lobbyists labor mightily to retain) and you get back your single premium, plus interest, when you start drawing down the annuity, usually upon retirement when your tax rate is lower. Minimum SPDA investments can range from $2,500 to $10,000.

Insurance companies are not writing many SPDAs currently. Partly that's because interest rates are low and they can borrow cheaply without assuming the liability of SPDA accounts, which become general obligations secured by any or all of their assets.

In addition, many investors prefer variable annuities. Buyers of these annuities can have varying amounts of their funds invested over time in a variety of mutual funds. Sales of variable annuities, in fact, have exploded along with the stock market's rise in recent years. But variable annuities are other equity-based investments are not for the investment-shy.

Rewards: The single-premium deferred annuity is no more complicated than a CD, but offers the fillip of tax deferral. What's more, if you die, your heirs acquire your principal and accumulated interest tax-free. (Don't you love insurance company lobbyists?)

Risk: Your insurance company could go under. In the 1980s, you would recall if you were the investing type, one major SPDA seller did - Baldwin United. Its failure was a major scandal that threw the SPDA market into temporary turmoil.

So pull that money out from your mattress and find an investment option that at least offers a chance of increasing your holdings.