Quote:
I guess I'm gonna need one of those fancy pants advisors to help with all this
|
Don't waste your money if you can avoid it. You're a smart guy, you can find the basic info (which is all 90% of the people need) pretty easily. You need to know two basic things.
1) What type of account to set up
2) How to invest in that account
If you can't afford to set aside more than $5000/year right now, keep it simple and go with a regular or Roth IRA. Go to Vanguard or Fidelity, their website will walk you through the setup. In fact, those sites have a lot of good information on the subject. Even if all you did was open an IRA and plunk your $5000 into a total stock market index or a money market, that's a good start. You can always adjust as you learn more.
HD's right. The great thing is that you can always move money from a standard IRA to a Roth later. So if you really need the deduction now, make the IRA contribution. Then maybe down the road you'll have a year where your taxable income is down for whatever reason and the tax ramifications make sense to convert all or part to a Roth (assuming the rules stay the same).