Where to open Roth IRA

[B00T]

Hey, I did a search but didnt find anything relevant to which actual place to open an IRA.

Does it matter which brokerage you choose? Which do you guys use? Is one any better than another?

Thanks in advance.

[James Boston]

I use AG Edwards.

[LondonBroil]

I opened one up early this year at Vanguard.

[alekhine8]

Wherever you choose, make sure you research the fees. I chose Vanguard because they are cheap. Once you have over $5,000, you don't incur fees. Below $5,000 is only a $10 fee per year which isn't bad.

(Unless you want to invest in an index fund - those are an additional $10 per year until you hit $10,000)

Other than fees, just research what you can invest in (typically mutual funds) and make sure the place you choose has funds you feel good about putting your money in.

[StickyWicket]

I'll throw my hat in here and recommend E*Trade. They offer a great 12b-1 fee rebate plan, which are the marketing fees that a large number of mutual fund companies charge, and they offer a wide variety of no load, no transaction fee funds if you're looking to keep costs low. Before I worked for a brokerage, I kept my accounts there and was quite pleased. You can even set up scheduled deposits into your ROTH in order to take advantage of dollar-cost avergaing throughout the year, though you will have to manually invest in the funds each month.

If you're setting this up on your own, may I recommend as well Morningstar.com and their Retirement Planner? A good analysis of your current holdings (and even if you don't have any), and your targeted retirement goals, and they give you a reliable analysis of what your asset allocation should be in order to achieve them. While they don't recommend specific funds with the Retirement Planner unless you input them, both Morningstar and E*Trade have great fund screeners that should help you with choosing the right funds for each asset category. You can get a free trial Premium membership, I believe, which will allow use of the Retirement Planner.

Sticky /images/graemlins/heart.gif

[goofball]

i just went with ameritrade and stuck it in an index fund. So far I've been happy wiht it.