In This Chapter

Individual retirement accounts, which are almost universally referred to as IRAs, are the colored eggs in your nest egg basket. They’re exciting because you get special breaks on your income taxes when you use them to save for retirement. In addition, unlike the retirement accounts you may have at work, you get to pick your IRA investments from an almost limitless number of choices. And of course, with such benefits comes responsibility. So let’s learn the basics of how IRAs work, a little about the typical investments used in IRAs, and about the special tax-saving ways they help you build your retirement security. This chapter gives you the foundation you need to implement the IRA protection strategies we cover in this book.