How do I know which roth ira to choose.

[Guest tenzan]

I'm 31 years old and ready to invest in a roth ira. I plan on maxing it out every year until I retire at age 60-65. My question is since I will be putting in money every year for at least 30 years how can I choose now which roth ira will bring me the best investment. I don't want to get locked into a situation 10 years from now where I realize that I made a mistake in choosing the roth ira that didn't bring results.

Also, can I invest in a mutual fund and set it up so that every Jan 1st they deposit $3000 into the roth ira?

Any help would be appreciated.

[John G]

With most brokerages and mutual funds you are not "locked in" for many years. Yes, there are a few front loaded and back loaded funds where the penalties can be severe.... but if you stick with NO LOAD mutual funds, this is not a problem. You can always decide to not only shift funds between different investment vehicles, but if you don't like the custodian you can change that as well through a direct custodian to custodian transfer.

There are dozens of prior posts dealing with "just getting started" or "first investments", or "index funds". You might want to use the search engine on this message board and read some of the prior posts. Basically, there are no guarentees when it comes to investing... you looks a choices, make and educated selection and then monitor the result. Folks that chase performance look for perfection usually do poorly because they are constantly moving their money to what was a great idea in the recent past. You may want to consider either: (1) a very broadly based NO LOAD mutual fund that has a slight bias towards growth, or (2) a stock index fund which usually features extremely low annual expenses.

Remember, a Roth is a type of account and has no inherent investment choice. Having opened a Roth - you have an account in which you can make investment choices.

I am not sure if any brokerage or mutual funds will set up an automatic system for Jan 1 since you must qualify each year (income and filing status) to be eligible for a Roth. You can ask.... but how much effort does it take to write out a check once a year?