Is this the time to start a retirement savings program? The answer, no matter how old you are, is probably yes!

Taking Stock

• Where am I, financially? The Securities and Exchange Commission has a plan to help you evaluate your financial situation.
  
  
• What will my Social Security retirement benefit be? Calculate what you can expect as your Social Security retirement benefit and more.
  
  
• How much do I need when I retire? Use this calculator from the American Savings Education Council (ASEC) to get an estimate of what you'll need to have available at retirement to live as you'd like. (The American Savings Education Council (ASEC) is a nonprofit national coalition of public- and private-sector institutions undertaking initiatives to raise public awareness about what is needed to ensure long-term personal financial independence.)
  
  
• Learn about retirement plans and the rules governing them on the IRS web site.
  
  
• The U. S. Department of Labor also has retirement plan information on its web site.

Getting Started

• What kind of IRA best suits my needs? Traditional IRA or Roth IRA?
  
  
• Where and how should I invest my IRA? We can't give you advice about specific investments but this Securities and Exchange Commission information about investing will help you get started on making sound investment decisions and answer questions that may come up through the years you are managing your IRA.
  
  
• Is my IRA account covered by Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) insurance?

Nuts and Bolts: Operating My IRA

See Publication 590, Individual Retirement Arrangements (IRAs) for information on how your IRA works.

• Setting up an IRA
• Contributions to an IRA
• Transferring money or property to and from an IRA
• Handling an inherited IRA
• Distributions (withdrawals) from an IRA
• Taking a credit for contributions to an IRA
• A comparison of traditional and Roth IRAs 

Publication 575, Pension and Annuity Income has information about the tax treatment of rollovers, hardship distributions and retirement income.

My IRA-Funded Retirement Plan at Work

Learn how retirement plans funded with IRAs work.

• SEP
• SIMPLE IRA
• SARSEP
• Payroll Deduction IRA