Roth IRA - Vanguard or Fidelity? If a college student had to pick one?
The minimum at Schwab to open an IRA is $1000. Why don't you check the two you listed to see what their minimum opening balance is? If you plan to go with ETFs, you want to ask them what their commission is for a minimum trade.  In Is investing in an ETF generally your best option after establishing a Roth IRA? sheegaon points out that for the smaller investor, index mutual funds are cheaper than the ETFs, part due to commission, part the bid/ask spread. Well, a couple things to keep in mind: Even if you have enough to meet the minimum initial amount, you need to have at least that much income in the year you make the contribution. You'll probably be best served saving up in a savings account so that by the time you have an income (and can thus make contributions), you have enough cash to meet the minimum initial contribution.
"Yes, you can withdraw the excess contribution (or actually any amount you contributed for 2015, not necessarily an excess), plus earnings from that withdrawn contribution, by April 15, and not incur a penalty for the excess contribution. It would count as if you did not contribute that amount at all. The earnings would be taxed as regular income, and the earnings may incur a penalty. Yes, you can ""recharacterize"" (all or part of) your Roth IRA contribution as a Traditional IRA contribution (or vice versa) by April 15. Recharacterization means you pretend the contribution was originally made as a Traditional IRA contribution, and did not involve Roth IRA at all. (""Conversion"" is something very different and can only go from Traditional to Roth, not the other way around.) You are likely not eligible to deduct that Traditional IRA contribution, so you will have to report it as a non-deductible Traditional IRA contribution on a 2015 Form 8606 Part 1. Note that after you've recharacterized it as a Traditional IRA contribution, you can also then ""convert"" that Traditional IRA money to a Roth IRA if you want, achieving the same state as what you have now. Contributing to a Traditional IRA and then converting to a Roth IRA is called a ""backdoor Roth IRA contribution""; if you don't have any existing pre-tax money in Traditional IRA or other IRAs, then this achieves the same as a regular Roth IRA contribution except with no income limits. When you convert, the earnings you have made since contributing will be taxed as income. If you had done the backdoor originally to begin with (convert right after contributing), you would have had no earnings in between and no tax to pay, but since if you do the conversion now you have waited so long, you are disadvantaged by having to pay tax on the earnings in between. If you convert, you will have to fill out Form 8606 Part 2 for the year you convert (2016)." With $800/month extra?  Do both. (I am ethnocentric enough to assume you live in the same country as me) First, figure out what your emergency fund should look like.  Put this money in a high yield checking or savings account.  Add to it monthly until you reach your goal.  It should be 3 to 6 months of your total monthly expenses.  It will be a lot more than $2k I suspect.  You will earn bubkis in interest, but the point of the emergency fund is a highly liquid asset for emergencies so you can choose cheaper car insurance and not buy warranties on stuff. With your $800/month, split it up this way: $416/month into a Roth IRA account at Vanguard (or Schwab or Fidelity) in the Star Fund (or similar low cost, diversified fund).  The star is $1000 to open, pretty diversified.  $416 is a lazy number that comes close to the $5000 annual limit for a Roth IRA in the US.  Contribute like clockwork, directly from your paycheck if you can.  This will make it easy to do and get you the benefit of dollar cost averaging. $200 or $300 into your savings account until you reach your emergency fund goal. $85 - $100.  Live a little.  Speculate in stocks with your vanguard account.  Or rent fancy cars.  Or taken a vacation or go party.  If you are saving $800/month in your early 20 be proud of yourself, but have a little fun too so you can let off steam.  It isn't much but you know you can play with it. Once you reach your emergency fund, save up for your future house or car or plane tickets to Paris.  Ask another question for how to save up for these kinds of goals. Adapted from an answer to a somewhat different question. Generally, 401k plans have larger annual expenses and provide for poorer investment choices than are available to you if you roll over your 401k investments into an IRA. So, unless you have specific reasons for wanting to continue to leave your money in the 401k plan (e.g. you have access to investments that are not available to nonparticipants and you think those investments are where you want your money to be), roll over your 401k assets into an IRA. But I don't think that is the case here.  If you had a Traditional 401k, the assets will roll over into a Traditional IRA; if it was a Roth 401k, into a Roth IRA. If you had started a little earlier, you could have considered considered converting part or all of your Traditional IRA into a Roth IRA (assuming that your 2012 taxable income will be smaller this year because you have quit your job). Of course, this may still hold true in 2013 as well.  As to which custodian to choose for your Rollover IRA, I recommend investing in a low-cost index  mutual fund such as VFINX which tracks the S&P 500 Index. Then, do not look at how that fund is doing for the next thirty years.  This will save you from the common error made by many investors when they pull out at the first downturn and thus end up buying high and selling low. Also, do not chase after exchange-traded mutual funds or ETFs (as many will likely recommend) until you have acquired more savvy or interest in investing than you are currently exhibiting. Not knowing which company stock you have, it is hard to make a recommendation about selling or holding on. But since you are glad to have quit your job, you might want to consider making a clean break and selling the shares that you own in your ex-employer's company. Keep the $35K (less the $12K that you will use to pay off the student loan) as your emergency fund. Pay off your student loan right away since you have the cash to do it. An interesting read.  As of lately, my office has been getting calls from Hartford, Fidelity, Oppenheimer, First Trust, and now Prudential regarding their ETFs.  A lot of them just received their 3 year number and the companies are trying to get inflows into them.  Prudential's has not launched yet, but is expecting to drop end of summer or early fall.  Fidelity is currently the only major competitor in the space.  They have a slightly lower internal cost compared to Vanguard and their position are almost identical to the iShares ETFs offered by Black Rock.  You can think of Black Rock as Bounty brand paper towels while Fidelity is more like Kirkland Signature.  Essentially the same thing with a slight savings on price.  One thing to look out for is the very thin trading volume on some of these new ETFs.  Oppenheimer and Hartford have very thin levels of volume which makes owning them feel like a game of old maid.  You don't want to be stuck holding the bag if something happens in the sector ETF that was purchased.  Always make sure there is a market for some of these ETFs before you buy it.  Fidelity has overcome some of these volume problems... but some of the ETFs are still a little thin.  Just stick with Vanguard for the thinly traded sectors and consider Fidelity if you want to shave a few bps on internal cost.    This has just been my personal observation of the industry. Vanguard might be the top provider of no-load mutual funds around.  Attempting to do better than 0.13% in fees is just as likely to cost you more time than the money you're attempting to say.  You're in your first job out of school--you've got better things to do with your time. "A Roth IRA is simply a tax-sheltered account that you deposit funds into, and then invest however you choose (within the limits of the firm you deposit the funds with). For example, you could open a Roth IRA account with Vanguard.  You could then invest the $3000 by purchasing shares of VOO, which tracks the S&P 500 index and has a very low expense ratio (0.04 as of last time I checked).  Fidelity has a similar option, or Schwab, or whatever brokerage firm you prefer. IRAs are basically just normal investment accounts, except they don't owe taxes until you withdraw them (and Roth don't even owe them then, though you paid taxes on the funds you deposit).  They have some limitations regarding options trading and such, but if you're a novice investor just looking to do basic investments, you'll not notice.   Then, your IRA would go up or down in value as the market went up or down in value. You do have some restrictions on when you can withdraw the funds; Roth IRA has fewer than a normal IRA, as you can withdraw the capital (the amount you deposited) without penalty, but the profits cannot be withdrawn until you're retirement age (I won't put an actual year, as I suspect that actual year will change by the time you're that old; but think 60s). The reason not to invest in an IRA is if you plan on using the money in the near future - even as an ""emergency fund"".  You should have some money that is not invested aggressively, that is in something very safe and very accessible, for your emergency fund; and if you plan to buy a house or whatever with the funds, don't start an IRA.  But if this is truly money you want to save for retirement, that's the best place to start. **Note, this is not investment advice, and you should do your own homework prior to making any investment.  You can lose some or all of the value of your account while investing." "The best predictor of mutual fund performance is low expense ratio, as reported by Morningstar despite the fact that it produces the star ratings you cite. Most of the funds you list are actively managed and thus have high expense ratios. Even if you believe there are mutual fund managers out there that can pick investments intelligently enough to offset the costs versus a passive index fund, do you trust that you will be able to select such a manager? Most people that aren't trying to sell you something will advise that your best bet is to stick with low-cost, passive index funds. I only see one of these in your options, which is FUSVX (Fidelity Spartan 500 Index Fund Fidelity Advantage Class) with an exceptionally low expense ratio of 0.05%. Do you have other investment accounts with more choices, like an IRA? If so you might consider putting a major chunk of your 401(k) money into FUSVX, and use your IRA to balance your overall porfolio with small- and medium-cap domestic stock, international stock, and bond funds. As an aside, I remember seeing a funny comment on this site once that is applicable here, something along the lines of ""don't take investment advice from coworkers unless they're Warren Buffett or Bill Gross""." Please either remove the $50 going to the 529 plan or move it into a ROTH IRA instead. You can always use your ROTH contributions to pay for college expenses in the future if you want to. I suspect you may not have enough saved up for retirement to have the luxury to help with college though.