Where To Open A Roth Ira (The 5 Best Places For Beginners)

where is the best place to open a Roth IRA after years of trying out lots and lots of different brokerages I've narrowed it down to the five best places to open a Roth IRA so rather than staying up until 2:00 a.m. trying to research all your options watch this video for a rundown of the pros and cons of the five best platforms hey everyone welcome back to my channel I'm Rhodes and this channel is all about money and investing for beginners so if you're new here feel free to subscribe and hit the notification bell for new videos like this every week when you're trying to decide where to open your Roth IRA you really can't go wrong with Vanguard although it's not my personal favorite I have to mention it because Vanguard is the og of retirement investing practically half of all Americans have their retirement portfolios at Vanguard for good reason Vanguard is known for its super low-cost target-date funds target-date funds are a special type of mutual funds that puts your retirement investing on autopilot they gradually adjust your asset allocation as you get closer to retirement age so once you do the initial setup and you buy into the fund you don't have to do anything with it literally until you retire so target date funds are a perfect option for lazy investors outside of a target date fund you'd have to create your own portfolio of stocks bonds and cash and adjust the asset allocations yourself over time since as you get older you'd want to gradually move your money out of stocks which are more volatile into more stable income producing investments like bonds obviously this takes some skill so buying into a target date fund completely eliminates the need for you to do that because the fund will do it for you so if you like the idea of putting your retirement on autopilot then you'd probably like target date funds in which case Vanguard would be a great place to open your Roth IRA that being said Vanguard is also good for buying individual stocks other kinds of ETFs and mutual funds and pretty much anything you might want to invest in so like I said regardless of what you want to invest in a Vanguard Roth IRA will allow you to do all of it with minimal fees another good place to open a Roth IRA is fidelity I've used fidelity for a really long time and it's my personal favorite like Vanguard it's a full sir brokerage that offers everything anyone could ever need as an investor whether you're a beginner or you're more experienced when I first opened a Roth I was keeping it really simple and just investing in low-cost index funds but over the years as I became more knowledgeable I started doing more advanced strategies like buying individual stocks trading options and even international stocks and no matter what it is that I wanted to do fidelity offered it so if you're a beginner at investing you'll probably start with something simple like index funds but if you ever want to branch out and do more advanced things as you grow and learn as an investor then the last thing you want to do is to have to move your IRA elsewhere because your current brokerage doesn't offer those things that's just the big headache so when you're deciding where to open your Roth IRA you want to think about how you're going to grow as an investor and choose a platform that will grow with you something else I like about fidelity is its low commissions although Vanguard and fidelity are very similar in terms of the range of products you can invest in and they're both great for index funds and target-date funds fidelity actually offers lower commissions for a lot of things for example Vanguard charges seven dollars per stock trade whereas fidelity charges $4.95 that's a pretty big difference and fees and commissions are really something you should consider before you open your Roth IRA anywhere last but not least if you open a Roth IRA at fidelity you'll also get really good customer service you don't have to go through endless automated telephone menus and whatnot just to talk to a real person it's never taken me more than 30 seconds to get to a customer service representative at fidelity and they'll hold your hand and walk you through step by step any question you have about your account whether it's how to place your first trade or how to rollover your 401k or how to do anything so in summary if fidelity and Vanguard are very comparable however fidelity I think obviously I'm a little bit more biased but I do think they offer lower fees for a lot of their products the third place I recommend opening a Roth IRA is acorns I'm a huge fan for two reasons I know a lot of people who have a hard time saving money but through the acorns roundup feature they've been able to save hundreds of dollars without even trying the app helps you come up with money to invest by connecting your debit card and rounding your purchases so that you can invest with your spare change so if you open your Roth IRA acorns you'll probably be able to keep adding a good chunk to your retirement savings just from the spare change round the feature the second reason I like acorns is that of course it's great for beginners whereas fidelity and Vanguard are brokerages acorns is a robo-advisor that means that acorns will tell you what to invest in and do it all for you for example when you open your Roth IRA at acorns one of the first questions they'll ask you is which of their five portfolios you want to invest in you don't have to choose which stocks to buy and you don't have to know what's going on in the stock market right now all you have to do is pick which portfolio that you want ranging from most conservative to most aggressive then once you've picked your portfolio you can check out what's gonna be in it each portfolio is professionally designed and backed by lots of data to optimize your returns while reducing your risk so other than choosing one of these five cookie-cutter portfolios there's really no other work required on your part to set up your Roth IRA at acorns it just doesn't get any more streamlined than that it coins makes it really easy for you to get the funds in your Roth IRA invested in the market as soon as possible with zero knowledge where is this fidelity or Vanguard there's gonna be a little bit more of a learning curve if my 90 year old grandmother wanted to get a cell phone I'd start her off with a flip phone not an iPhone an iPhone has too many features and she would just get confused acorns is like the flip phone of investing limited options but super simple to use for beginners so I think if you're just starting out you're gonna like acorns a lot – is another investing app and it's a little bit different from acorns but it's a great place for beginners to open your Roth IRA like acorns stash has a roundup feature that lets you invest with your spare change but what differentiates stash from acorns is it's themed portfolios so they have investment options like clean and green the 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