go with a roth. look for a financial advisor with a major investment name behind it. like hd vest, raymond james, oppenheimer, northwestern mutual, even hr block franchisees do investments now. meet with a rep and keep searching for one you like. they will be able to help you out a lot. stick with a roth though -- invest in one now before the liberals do away with it.

Instead of me typing in all the information - just check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individual_Retirement _Account and contact me if you have anymore questions. I can suggest a few place for you to start a retirement account to - I don't by the way work for any of these companies but I do teach my students about retirement accounts.

Good Luck!!!

401k are only company sponsored programs. You can have a 401k only from an employer. An IRA or Roth IRA would be a great way for you to start on your own. The the major difference between is that an IRA is tax free savings today. A Roth IRA is taxed when you put it in the account while the traditional is taxed when you take the money out. A Roth is a bet that your tax bracket will be higher when you take it out than today. But a traditional allows you to earn interest on the money that would have been taken out for taxes. Go to Fidelity.com for more details or any other reputable financial institution.

If your company offers 401k and matching dollar program go with that first. If they don't and you don't like the options the company's 401k offers, I would suggest Roth IRA. The key difference btw roth and traditional is the taxes. Roth IRA is after tax dollars and traditional is pretax. In some cases, you can withdraw your original contribution from Roth but traditional you can but will be penalized. If you do decide to go with an IRA, you can pretty much set it up anywhere from a bank to a low cost brokerage firm, from a CD to mutual funds.

if you don't work for a company, then you can rule-out a company sponsored 401k plan.

traditional IRAs are funded with after-tax dollars, but you will be able to take a deduction on your taxes for those contributions. when you retire, the withdrawals will be taxed.

roth IRAs are funded with after-tax dollars; and you cannot take deductions on your taxes for your contributions. however, you will not be taxed when you withdraw at retirement.

First of all - Congratulations on looking to do this at a young age! It's going to make a world of difference when you retire if you start young vs. start in your 40s.

The LA Times offers a great (and free) introduction to money topics on their web site. I've linked to it below. You may have to register for free to use it.

You are working, but not for a company. Does that mean you are self-employed? If so, you may be eligible for a Simplified Employee Pension (SEP) that enables you to put away 25% of your compensation, up to $42K so you don't have to pay taxes on it now. You pay taxes when you take it out in retirement. This involves some more complicated set up.

If you want to keep it simple, you can set up an IRA with almost any mutual fund or brokerage house. Traditional IRA means you don't pay any taxes on the money you contribute now, but pay them when you pull it out. A Roth IRA means you pay taxes now, but the earnings are tax free when you take it out during retirement.

If you don't pay much in taxes now, I'd put it in a Roth and pay the taxes now. If you pay a lot in taxes, use the Traditional IRA and give yourself a tax break now and worry about the taxes when you retire.

Both are very easy to set up and I recommend setting them up at Vanguard. Vanguard offers a very low cost and very easy way to set up a nice diversified retirement plan. You simply go to Vanguard.com, pick whether you want a Traditional or Roth IRA, fill out the online paperwork, and then you can choose how to invest your money. Here's the best part - they have a plan called the Target 20XX fund, where the 20XX is the year you anticipate retiring. You invest your money in that fund, and they manage all the diversification and risk adjustments for you automatically. They'll spread your money across a large variety of stocks, bonds, international investments, etc. I highly recommend this approach and have done exactly that with my IRA.