Is Any Roth IRA Better Than No Roth IRA?

Posted on September 12, 2007 by Eric
Filed Under Investing, Reflection, Retirement

For me, I’d say “Yes”. Just having a Roth IRA got me started in the right direction by beginning to invest outside my 401K.

My Roth IRA was with an insurance company. You may be wondering why I had one there. In the past, sometimes I had a hard time motivating myself to do the right thing. Going through the process of opening one up seemed like a lot of work at the time. I didn’t take the initiative to do it myself. When my insurance agent called me and asked me to come in to go over new guidelines on my insurance, he also mentioned Roth IRAs to me.

I knew I should have one. So when he said he would take care of everything, I figured why not. It was easier than filling out the paperwork and managing it myself. I knew that this would result in higher fees, but since I had not set one up before, and I knew that it was something I needed to do, I went ahead and did it.

I don’t regret that I set it up. If my agent hadn’t talked me into it, I might not have done it for years. I do regret that I didn’t personally manage it. But back then I wouldn’t have known what to do, and I had other priorities in my life. Now I am much more educated on investing, and my priorities are in the right place.

Over the past year I’ve been reading and learning about how to properly invest and manage my money. Today, the transfer from the insurance company cleared and I’m in a position to manage my own Roth IRA.

If I had left it at the insurance company, it would have been alright, but the fees would have been higher than they needed to be, and that would have eaten into my savings.

But at least I would have had savings.

My goal for this week is to take some time and figure out what I’m going to invest it in. Because it’s long term, it needs to be in mutual funds or ETFs, but I want to make sure I have a healthy mix of funds (stocks and bonds, foreign and domestic). ~~By Saturday~~This upcoming week, I’ll report back what I decided to invest my Roth in and why.

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