My short answer is that you need to invest your Roth IRA into equity mutual funds. My favorite fund companies are Vanguard, T. Rowe Price, and Fidelity. All have an excellent selection of funds, low fees, great websites, and outstanding customer service.

If you’re not sure what type of equity fund to invest in, start simple with an S&P 500 fund – this will spread your investment across the 500 largest U.S. companies (think Coke, GE, Disney, Microsoft, etc.). Note that equity funds fluctuate up AND DOWN over the short term, but historically they have been the best long term investment, averaging around 9-10% per year. If you average 9% per year, your monthly $150 will grow to about $440K after 35 years. But remember, you’re going to be increasing your monthly investment amount as you start making more money.

After you set up your account, you should educate yourself about investing – it’s really not that complicated, and this information will serve you VERY well throughout your life. Talk with a friend or family member who knows about investing or – better yet – pick up a "For Dummies" or other beginning investment guide at any bookstore or library.

BTW – it’s great that you are thinking about investing for retirement at your age. The longer you wait, the more difficult it becomes. You are doing yourself a HUGE favor by starting now.

I hope that helps. Good luck!
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Former stock broker, MBA in Finance, and 20+ years investing experience.

An IRA is not a specific set investment; it’s just an type of account within which you can hold many types of investments – mutual funds, ETFs, CDs, even stocks – that YOU choose. Talk to your IRA custodian. For now, I’d recommend a good target-date or growth mutual fund, and I agree with the other posters, stay away from annuities.

Then educate yourself on the basics of investing. It doesn’t take a PhD in math to learn the basics. "Investing For Dummies" is a great starter book I would recommend. The more you know, the better off you’ll be. Everyone needs to understand how to invest for their own future.
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Your best chance of that happening is to invest in equity mutual funds. Forget annuities for an IRA account. They are an extremely poor choice.

You need to immediately move your IRA account to a mutual fund company. You could stay at the bank and have them invest in American Funds mutual funds for you. They have several that have in the past earned 9% annually even after the front end load. But they have only one that has earned that during the last 10 years. Their 10 year average return is about 5%. That will not get you to one million in less than 50 years.

Most no load mutual funds have a minimum investment amount of $2500. Some will allow you to begin with $50 if you allow them to automatically deduct it from your bank account each month. T Rowe Price will do that and others also.

A mutual fund that might possibly get you to the one million, but there is no guarantee, is MCHFX. It invests in Chinese companies. China is growing. The US is not. Its 10 year annual return is 17%. If that should continue, which is doubtful but possible, then you will reach one million in less than 35 years with your 100 a month. By 35 years you will have almost 2 million. But there would be a great deal of risk to you also if that were the only mutual fund you were to invest in. It is much better to spread your investments around among about 5 different mutual funds with different investment objectives.

PS I do own MCHFX in my Roth IRA.
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You can ask for more money, but in the end if you don’t want to fight with them, just settle.

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What you need is the help of a financial professional that will help you choose a diverse portfolio of mutual funds. Given your age, the portfolio should be pretty aggressive in nature. Interview 2 or 3 financial advisors. note: NOT stockbrokers. There may be one or two small shops in your area. I would certainly find an Waddell & Reed office since they focus on long term planning and goals, not short term gains.

Who do you talk to? Find an affluent friend or business person and ask them for a referral. Another good place to get referrals is from your accountant if you have one. Estate planning lawyers will also be tuned into good advisors (after all in order to plan an estate they are looking for people that have money that must be protected.) The lawyer and the accountant should be willing to and able to immediately recommend one or two professionals.

Who ever you go with, you should trust them and feel at ease with them. For the time being your situation is very simple. You should be able to explain any investment that you enter into to a 10 y.o. There is no fee to talk to a professional and when meeting with them don’t be shy about asking about fees.

My guess is that Ms. Orman probably had some infered rate of return of something like 8% per year average. Get your money out of the bank and get it into equity(stock) mutual funds.

Congratulations on starting so early. Time is the greatest allie that you have. As long as you continue regular monthly investments then you will look at dips (drops) in the market like 2008 as tremendously good things for you. Those are your buying opportunities.

Good Luck
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Albert Einstein when asked what he considered to be the most powerful force in the universe answered: Compound interest!

The two usual ways to calculate pain and suffering are either using the amount of the medical bills as a base or so much per unit of time. Neither one is a perfect system but they help come up with a number. It sounds like you put up with the pain for 3 months–what’s that worth to you per month? $500 a month? $1000 per month?

The classic formula is 3 times the medical bills, so that the claimant, the lawyer and the doctor each get the same amount. Keep in mind that you don’t have a lawyer to pay.

Decide on a figure and ask for something that a bit more than that. Don’t lower your initial demand until they make a counteroffer. Listen to what they say, have some points to raise about how much this affected your life, etc, and be prepared to compromise. If you feel like you’re losing the argument, ask for time to think about it and call them back.

(BTW, don’t forget to ask for the amount of the wages you lost on those 4 shifts you missed–they’re part of your claim.)
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You need a mentor and you need one now.
Do you know anyone that knows anything about investing?
A parent, a friend?
You need to invest in someting.
Unfortunately with only $150/ month to invest, you’ll get hit hard with commissions.
Since each month you’ll have to purchase more shares of stock.

Most people that open up a roth just dump 5K a year in it.
Invest it in something, and sit on it for a year.
I have never heard of monthly payments.
That makes investing and buying stock complicated.
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