I have recently been reading many articles pertaining to the advantages of a Roth IRA. [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roth_IRA[url]. I began to weigh the my options as far as where to park my retirement funds.

After contributing my maximum 15% to my 401k the last 2 years. I decided to cut wayyyyyyy back on these contributions and focus on maxing out my Roth IRA for the rest of 2007 ($4,000). My employer doesn't offer a match of any kind, so I'm not losing out on that.

Hopefully by 12/31/07 I will have maxed out my Roth and can then go back to larger 401k contributions in 2008, as I will have the entire year to try to max out my Roth in 2008 ($5,000).

By the way, i opened up my Roth at ING Direct. It was easy and painless. The mutual fund options are limited, so I may be looking to move to Vanguard or Fidelity in the future.

Well it looks like the market is on its way to its 3rd straight triple digit loss.

Is this simply a correction like the one we saw in February or is the market trneding towards a long term downturn?

It seems to me at soem point consumer confidence and consumer spending will ahve to fall due to all the gas and housing worries.

People can't continue to artifially inflate the economy by spending money they don't have right?

I will give you a purely "hypothetical" situation (and by hypothetical, I mean my exact situation) and ya'll tell me what you would do.

I have about $2,600 in credit debt that is being charged 0% interest and will continue to do so until January of 2008.

If you had $400 of discretionary income each month to either pay this credit card down or put into a savings account earning 5% what would you do?

Ok, I am opening this up to all of you.........

I have $60,000 sitting in a 12 month CD right now that comes due in August. It is currently earning about 4.90%.

The security of the low-risk CD is nice, however, part of me knows I should have it in something a little riskier.

I am about 2 years away from buying my first house, which this money is for.

I have an idea of what I want to do with it, but I wanted to see what everyone else's opinions were...............