Roth vs. Whole Insurance vs. Cash
"Cash/CD's for a house downpayment = Good. Resist the urge to invest this money unless you're not planning on the house for at least 5 years. Roth IRA - Good. Amounts contributed are able to be withdrawn without tax penalties, though you would really need to be in a crisis for this to be a good idea. It's your long-term, retirement money. The earlier you start, the better. Use your 401K at work, if it's offered. Contribute to the Roth as much as you can, as well. Whole life (""Cash value"") life insurance: Be careful... Cash-value life insurance (Whole, Universal, Variable Universal) must be watched more closely as you age. Once they reach that ""magical"" point of being self-sustaining, you cannot relax. The annual cost of insurance is taken from the cash value, which your premium payments replenish. If you stop making premium payments, eventually the cost of insurance (which goes up every year) will erode your cash value down to nothing, at which point more premium must be paid to keep the policy in force. This often happens in your old age, when you can least afford the surprise, and costs are highest. Some advisors get messed up in their priorities when they start depending on the 8-10% commissions they are paid on insurance policies. Since premiums for cash-value policies are far higher than for term policies, you might get some insight into your advisor if they ignore your attempts to consider a term policy. Because of the insurance costs' effects on your cash value, these types of policies are some of the most inefficient and expensive ways to invest. You are better off not investing via a life insurance policy. You don't need life insurance unless someone depends on your financial contribution to their life (spouse and children, for example). Some people just like the peace of mind it brings, and some people want a lump sum to leave as a gift to their loved ones (which is an expensive way to leave a gift).  You can have these ""feel-good"" benefits with a term policy for much less money, if you must have them. Unless you expect to become uninsurable at some point in the future, you should consider using term insurance to meet your life insurance needs until it is no longer needed." "Week after week, I make remarks regarding expenses within retirement accounts. A 401(k) with a 1% or greater fee is criminal, in my opinion.  Whole life insurance usually starts with fees north of 2%, and I've seen as high as 3.5% per year. Compare that to my own 401(k) with charges .02% for its S&P fund.  When pressed to say something nice about whole life insurance, I offer ""whole life has sent tens of thousands of children to college, the children of the people selling it."" A good friend would never suggest whole life, a great friend will physically restrain you from buying such a product." You're extremely fortunate to have $50k in CDs, no debt, and $3800 disposable after food and rent. Congrats. Here's how I would approach it. If you see yourself getting into a home in the next couple of years, stay safe and liquid. CDs (depending on the duration) fit that description. Because you have disposable income and you're young, you should be contributing to a Roth IRA. This will build in value and compound over your lifetime, so that when you're in your 70s you'll actually have a retirement.  Financial planners love life insurance because that's how they make all their money. I have whole life insurance because its cash value will be part of my retirement. It may also cover my wife if I ever decide to get married. It may or may not make sense for you now depending on how soon you want to buy a home and home expensive they are in your zip code.  Higher risk, higher reward- you can count on that. Keep the funds in the United States and don't try to get into any slick financial moves.  If you have a school in town, see if you can take an Intro to Financial Planning class. It's extremely helpful for anyone with these kinds of questions. Advantage of cash: You can spend the money without having to pay any fees or taxes to get it out. Disadvantage: When inflation is greater than zero, which it has been for many decades, your cash is continually losing value. Advantages of an IRA (Roth or classic): Your money will usually grow as the investments return a profit. You get special tax benefits. Disadvantages: There's risk -- you may lose money. There are tax penalties for withdrawing the money before retirement. In general, you should only put money in an IRA if you expect to leave it there until you retire. Or at least, for a long time. Whole life is a combination of a life insurance policy and an investment. Advantages: Combines insurance and investment into one convenient monthly payment. Disadvantages: The investment portion typically has lower returns than you could get elsewhere. If you have no need for life insurance -- if you're not supporting anyone or you're confidant they could get along without you or you don't like them and don't care what happens to them when you're gone or whatever -- then there's no point buying life insurance, whole or term. You're paying for a product that you don't need. It's pretty common advice to tell people that instead of buying a whole life policy, they should buy a term policy with the same coverage, and then invest the difference in the premium. For example, if you were considering getting a $100,000 whole life policy that costs $50 per month (just making up numbers, of course it depends on your age, health, etc), and you see you could get a $100,000 term life policy for $30 per month, you will almost certainly do better in the long run to buy the $30 term policy and put the other $20 into investments. The catch to this plan is that there are usually transaction costs to investing. Even a discount broker like Ameritrade or Scott Trade charges around $10 per transaction. So if you tried to invest $20 each month, you'd lose half of it to transaction fees. Which means that in practice, you'd have to save that money up until you had at least a few hundred. And at that point many people find other things always seem to come up to spend the money on, so that while they start out with every intention of investing this money, they don't.
Luke, I'd like to point out some additional benefits of the Roth IRA accounts 1) Going Roth, you can effectively increase the amount of your contribution to your IRA account. In your example, you are assuming that your contribution to Roth IRA is in fact $ 85 ($100 less $ 15 tax paid). In reality, albeit more costly, Roth IRA allows you to contribute full $ 100 ($117.65 less $ 17.65 tax incurred.) Using this method you can in fact grow your tax-free funds to $ 1.006.27 over 30 years. The larger you effective tax rate is, the larger will be the difference between your maximum effective Traditional vs Roth IRA contribution will be. 2) Should you need to access your IRA funds in case of emergency (unqualified event of not buying your first home, nor paying for your college education), Roth IRA account contributions can be withdrawn without incurring the 10% penalty charge, that would be imposed on your unqualified Traditional IRA distribution. 3) As other contributors noted it's hard to believe that lower US tax rates would prevail. Chances are you will be contributing to Traditional 401k later throughout your work life. Having a Roth IRA account would afford you a tax diversification needed to hedge against possible tax rate hikes coming in the future. Considering the gloomy future of the Social Security funding, and ever-growing US national debt, can we really expect for there to not be any tax rate increases in the next 20-40 years?! By the way, as others pointed out your effective tax rate will always be lower than your marginal tax bracket. "I spent some time searching, and couldn't find the answer written explicitly in IRS regulations.   What I did find was this chart from the irs showing that nonqualified distributions from a Roth 401k are pro-rated between contributions and earnings.  It is well documented that you can't withdraw any money early or tax free (even contributions) from a Roth 401k (""Designated Roth Account"" in IRS parlance) that has made any money. source You can do a direct rollover from a ""Designated Roth Account"" to a Roth IRA and the basis  describing contributions vs. earnings is preserved. source And there is plenty of evidence showing you can withdraw contributions from a Roth IRA without penalty. source All that being said, I can't find anything from the IRS that says this is a legitimate strategy." What asset allocation is right for you (at the most basic the percentage if stocks vs bonds; at the advanced level, percentage of growth vs value, international vs domestic etc) is a function of your age, retirement goals, income stability and employment prospects until retirement.  Roth IRA is orthogonal to this.  Now, once you have your allocation worked out there are tactical tax advantage decisions available: interest income, REIT and MLP dividends are taxed at income and not capital gains rate, so the tactical decision is to put these investments in tax advantage accounts like Roth and 401ks.  Conversely, should you decide to buy and hold growth stocks there are tactical advantages to keeping them in a taxable account: you get tax deferment until the year you choose to sell (barring a takeover), you get the lower lt cap gains rate, and you can employ tax loss harvesting. "the deadline for roth conversions is december 31st.  more precisely, roth conversions are considered to have happened in the tax year the distribution was taken. this creates a kind of loop hole for people who do an ira rollover (not a trustee-to-trustee transfer). technically, you can take money out of your traditional ira on december 31st and hold it for 60 days before deciding to roll it over into either another traditional ira or a roth ira. if you decide to put it in another traditional account, it is not a taxable event.  but if you decide to put it in a roth account, the ""conversion"" is considered to have happened in december. unfortunately non-trustee rollovers are tricky. for one, the source trustee will probably take withholding that you will have to make up with non-ira funds. and rollovers are limitted to a certain number per year. also, if you miss the 60-day deadline, you will have to pay an early-withdrawal penalty (with some exceptions). if you really want to push the envelope, you could try to do this with a 60-day-rule extension, but i wouldn't try it. source: https://www.irs.gov/publications/p590a/ch01.html oddly, recharacterizations (basically reverse roth conversions) have a deadline of october 15th of the year after the original roth conversion it is reversing. so, you could do the conversion in december, then you have up to 10 months to change your mind and ""undo"" the conversion with a ""recharacterization"". again, this is tricky business. at the very least, you should be aware that the tax calculations for recharacterization are different if you convert the funds into a new empty roth account vs an existing roth account with a previous balance. honestly, if you want to get into the recharacterization business, you can probably save more on taxes by converting in january before 20-month stock market climb rather than simply converting in the year your tax brackets are low. that is the typical recharacterization strategy. source: https://www.irs.gov/Retirement-Plans/Retirement-Plans-FAQs-regarding-IRAs-Recharacterization-of-Roth-Rollovers-and-Conversions" Like keshlam mentioned Insurance and Investment should not generally be mixed. Term Insurance is the best and cheapest insurance. This would work out better than Money Back Option you have. i.e. Take a Term Insurance for the same amount, invest the difference between the Premium of Term Insurance and Money Back option. Even if you invest this difference in Bank FD's the return is much more than what your Money Back policy gives. Pension Plans are not advisable. Although IRDA has in recent times streamlined quite a bit of it, there is still some amount that goes into commission, plus the returns from Annuity providers [the yearly payment you get after retirement] is less than what you get from FD's. i.e. currently the Annuity rates are in the range of 5-6% and one year FD's are in the range of 7-8%. The only reason one need to go with Pension plan or Money Bank plan would be if one is not financially disciplined or can't  reconcile to the fact that Term Insurance in-spite of not giving any returns is much better. $4,000 is a relatively small amount in the grand scheme of retirement. I think you should decide in general whether a Traditional or Roth makes more sense for you (with the intent that you will continue contributing to it in the future), and then treat the $4,000 like you would any other contribution. "I'll assume you live in the US for the start of my answer - Do you maximize your retirement savings at work, at least getting your employer's match in full, if they do this. Do you have any other debt that's at a higher rate?  Is your emergency account funded to your satisfaction? If you lost your job and tenant on the same day, how long before you were in trouble?  The ""pay early"" question seems to hit an emotional nerve with most people. While I start with the above and then segue to ""would you be happy with a long term 5% return?"" there's one major point not to miss - money paid to either mortgage isn't liquid. The idea of owing out no money at all is great, but paying anything less than ""paid in full"" leaves you still owing that monthly payment. You can send $400K against your $500K mortgage, and still owe $3K per month until paid. And if you lose your job, you may not so easily refinance the remaining $100K to a lower payment so easily.  If your goal is to continue with real estate, you don't prepay, you save cash for the next deal. Don't know if that was your intent at some point.  Disclosure - my situation - Maxing out retirement accounts was my priority, then saving for college. Over the years, I had multiple refinances, each of which was a no-cost deal. The first refi saved with a lower rate. The second, was in early 2000s when back interest was so low I took a chunk of cash, paid principal down and went to a 20yr from the original 30. The kid starts college, and we target retirement in 6 years. I am paying the mortgage (now 2 years into a 10yr) to be done the month before the kid flies out. If I were younger, I'd be at the start of a new 30 yr at the recent 4.5% bottom. I think that a cost of near 3% after tax, and inflation soon to near/exceed 3% makes borrowing free, and I can invest conservatively in stocks that will have a dividend yield above this. Jane and I discussed the plan, and agree to retire mortgage free." Yes, I have done this and did not feel a change in cash flow - but I didn't do it a the age of 23.  I did it at a time when it was comfortable to do so.  I should have done it sooner and I strongly encourage you to do so.   Another consideration:  Is your companies program a good one?  if it is not among the best at providing good funds with low fees then you should consider only putting 6% into your employer account to get the match.  Above that dollar amount start your own ROTH IRA at the brokerage of your choice and invest the rest there.  The fee difference can be considerable amounting to theoretically much higher returns over a long time period. If you choose to do the max , You would not want to max out before the end of the year.  Calculate your deferral very carefully to make sure you at least put in 6% deferral on every paycheck to the end of the year.  Otherwise you may miss out on your company match.  It is wise to consider a ROTH but it is extremely tough to know if it will be good for you or not.  It all depends on what kind of taxes (payroll, VAT, etc) you pay now and what you will pay in the future.  On the other hand the potential for tax-free capital accumulation is very nice so it seems you should trend toward Roth.