Today I pulled the trigger and opened a Vanguard ROTH IRA.  The contribution deadline for 2013 is April 15th 2014, so if you move quickly you can open one up and fund for last year.  After which, you can always fund the current year until that April 15th date every year.

The process itself is quite easy and can be done fully online and should have taken me about 10 minutes to complete, however there were a couple of bumps on the way that I wanted to ask a human about so I didn’t make any mistakes in structuring the account.

Please note, if you decide to fund via Bank Transfer then you need the funds available today and the process creates a time stamp that shows your account open within the deadline, even though it might take a couple of days for the funds to show up on the other end.  If you chose to fund via a check then you need to ensure that the letter is postmarked before April 15th (so they told me) but I didn’t trust that method so went for Online Funding.Continue Reading