Roth IRA

Today I finally opened a Roth IRA! It's probably something that I should've done a few years ago, but you might recall that I was actually considering buying a second home for a while and was saving my money for a possible down payment...but that obviously never happened. After much consideration, I decided to open an account with Vanguard. I made maximum contributions for both 2009 and 2010 and put 70% of my money towards the Target Retirement 2045 Fund. The objective of this fund is a retirement close to the year I selected, which is kinda funny 'cause I hope to retire sooner than that...but I guess we'll see how life goes for me the next 35 years. :) It starts out very aggressive with about 90% of funds invested in stocks and only 10% in bonds, but over time it will automatically balance the funds out based on predetermined trends. I put the remaining 30% towards the Vanguard 500 Index which invests in the 500 largest U.S. companies (w00t - IBM is 7 on their list!). It's exciting for me knowing that today I made a move towards saving more of my money and preparing for the future. I feel so responsible and am happy to finally have gotten this account open!