Any advice for someone in their early 30s about saving for retirement?

I'm going to start an IRA. I don't know who I should invest with or what I should invest in. My boss uses T Rowe Price and invests in mutual funds in pharmaceuticals. I was thinking of using them and finding something in stem cell research. I don't even know if I know what I'm talking about. What do you think? What are you doing for retirement?

Whoa! You got some weird, complicated answers to an easy question....
You want to start an IRA.... okay...first you find out who you want to handle it ( not what it's invested in) You can simply go to E-trade...fill out an application on-line, send a deposit...and you'll have an IRA that YOU can make various investments from.
You have two choices with an IRA traditional? or Roth?
With a Traditional you get credit on your income tax form and it will slightly lower your taxes this year. ( not that big a difference, not that good of a deal)
With a Roth you get no tax break...UNTIL... ta da ..you start taking money out ( 60 yrs old)...and then the money is tax-free..you have NO IDEA how important that is, until you're old and sick of being taxed on evey damned little penny you' ve earned, saved,own....
As far as actually "investing" the money you'll have to be a little more educated as to what's available...try:
http://moneycentral.msn.com/beginnerguid...
You'll be looking for "mutual fund" that invests your money in different companies doing different things...that's called "diversifying" you don't want ALL your money in one place ( stem cells, pharmaceuticals) What if they have a bad week? year?
In a few years..( before you know it!) ... you'll have enough profits to branch into more funds and then, maybe then, you can move little bits into "what's hot" now and again, but only if you read, read, read.....and have a much better idea of what you're doing......it's not hard at all, play around with " fund research" at msn, cnbc, or yahoo...and just by killing time there , you'll have some idea of what's going on.
Good luck...

put $5 a day into lotto...you should win eventually, right?

Roth Ira, you're still young so I would do one high risk investment and one low risk-the low risk will get you over time but they're pretty gaurunteed-high can get you money much faster but it may loose money as well.

Set an appointment with a financial professional and explain what your goals are. Listen to their advice and think it over. Don't necessarily worry about picking individual stocks so much and starting to save for your retirement. There are tons of options out there. Also begin to read and educate yourself on investing or join an investment club. Either way, start putting away money now and as much as you can afford. Also take advantage of anything offered at work.

Well my Husband has a 401k plan and we have a savings account for our retirerment.Save save save.

I'm not a saver, so I'm not a fan of mutual funds. However, I do enjoy investing in other financial investment vehicles in the stockmarket. The returns are usually good, if you know what you're doing.

First of all, START NOW!

Secondly, DON'T do what your boss is doing! When the blind lead the blind, they BOTH end up in a ditch!

Instead, diversify. Start an IRA and break it down into 4 segments: 50% market index fund; 25% US Govt bond fund (15+ yrs to maturity); 15% in a high yield corp bond fund; and 10% in a Gold fund. 1-3 times a year, rebalance the current percentages back to the original 50-25-15-10.

I am assuming that the IRA you are thinking about is with your job. If this is the case, put as much into it as you can. Diversify the areas you invest in. The investment companies are good at helping investers do this. Put 90% in long term investments, 10% in short term investments. Of the 90% put a ninth in Gold (gold backed stock).

In the USA the government will not permit more than 15% of your pay to go to investments (IRA). So it is very important to spend 50% of your take home pay on real estate. Making "GOOD buy" real estate is the best investment for the short term and long term.

"GOOD buy" real estate is a purchase where the value of the real estate is greater than the cost by at lease 10%.
(Buy a property for $105,000 that is valued at $125,000)
In the above example, assume that the buy and sell expenses are $6500, then the buyer at $105,000 - sell at $125,000 would have $20,000 minus $6,500 = $13,500. I this took two years from buy to sell, I don't believe you would miss even one day of work.

Please note that the real estate value don't have to go up to make money. Please note you don't have to be in a high price district to make money. I have done these tranactions on property I bought for $25,000 and less. Your credit is only important if you borrow money to do any of these tranactions. My point is, live your life with the idea that you will live well, and your retirement will happen when you want it too.

Diversification is the key.

One of the easiest ways to diversify is an index fund IRA. They also generally have lower overhead. Whether you want a traditional or Roth IRA depends on your tax situation. A traditional IRA is tax deferred -- so you pay the tax later; a Roth IRA isn't, but then the money you make is tax protected. So -- the question is -- will your taxes be more now or then? And how much will that tax savings now allow you to invest more now? Etc. -- you should at least talk to a tax guy if not an financial advisor.

As I said, I prefer the index funds. An index fund basically tracks the stock market, or some substantial part of it. That's why the low overhead since there's less managing of the fund. With the other funds you have people trying to guess which companys are going to go up or down - which requires alot of research and work -- which you pay for. With the index fund you don't have all that work done and so it costs less.

For example, you might have an index fund that covers all the S&P 500 stocks.

With an index fund, you are gambling that the stock market as a whole will go up -- which historically it has always done. Even with the Great Depression -- those who were able to hold onto their investments for the long haul wound up making alot of money. You're young enough to ride out any downs.

As you approach retirement start moving the money into more conservative options - eventually CDs which are insured up to an amount that escapes me just now (it used to be $100,000 -- but now its..... man i just can't remember -- but is alot -- and you can have CDs with different banks and so have it all insured if you get that much saved)

Lots to learn -- get some books - maybe take a night class --

Good luck --

I think a good place to start would be with an IRA. I personally have a Roth IRA. The difference between a Roth IRA and a "regular" IRA is when you invest the money. With a regular IRA, you invest money before-tax. The advantage is that it lowers your taxable income, therefore you pay less taxes. With a Roth IRA, you invest money after-tax. The advantage with this is that when you pull the money out of the IRA at age 59 1/2, you do not have to pay any taxes. When you are setting up the IRA, you select from different fund packages. These packages usually have a good mixture of high and low risk investments. They are usually set up to be more risky the younger you are (more money invested in stocks) and less risky the closer you get to retirement (more money in bonds). One good thing about IRAs is that you can set them up when you are paying taxes, and have your tax return deposited into the IRA. (there is an option to do this if you use TurboTax. I believe you even get to waive the submittal fee if your return is deposited into an IRA.)

T Rowe Price is a respectable name, and has been in business for a long time. Another good company is Vanguard.

Another option for retirement is a 401K. You do not necessarily have to set one of these accounts up through your employer. Investment companies like T Rowe Price and Vanguard can set a 401K up for you. (The benefit of going through your employer is that the employer will usually match a certain percent of your investment.) A 401K works like an IRA, except that with a 401K you have more control of what your investment portfolio looks like.

I am not sure if you will be able to invest in companies that do stem cell research. However, if you were interested, you might want to contact a Venture Capital firm. These companies provide financing to growing businesses. The downside to investing money in a Venture Capital firm is that they tend to have a high minimum investment (high in that the normal person cannot afford it).

Hopefully this helps! The only good thing is that you still have time on your side to put enough money away for retirement.

Start a Roth IRA, standard IRAs are for 401Ks, because you don't want to get taxed coming and going. You just want to get taxes coming (Roth IRA) or going (IRA with 401K money). If you have just a standard IRA you get taxed coming and going.

You might want to compare these to the performance of the mutual funds you are thinking about.
http://finance.yahoo.com/etf/browser/mkt...

You can also compare them to indexes such as the SP 500.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?t=1y&s=XLI...