Thanks meldy! I do have many places. I had this guy who has been working with my dear friend, who lost her husband very suddenly last year, helping me. I've been to the SSI retirement symposium so that I could hear what I might need to tell mom who is just about to retire (age 70 next year), and what I might start doing to position myself. I saw him in action there; he was giving the right advice. "Don't take Medicare until as late as possible", if nothing else, but there was more, and he was right on. I've been teaching my son that too, showing him how compound interest was the most important part, so much so, that he could invest X, by age X, and if it averaged X, then he'd have millions by the time he retired (way earlier than 65), even if he quit at a certain point... that he wanted to start now and doesn't plan to quit investing in it. He started his retirement nest egg at age 8 (three years ago), and will put it into his first CD by the mid-year next year ($1,000 minimum), which is pretty good because he started out with getting only $15 a month for everything he does, and although it's up to $45, that's all he ever get. Anything else, he'll have to work a job (to pay for a car, gas, insurance, designer clothes, etc.). He's never taken anything out of the retirement fund because he has another savings that he takes from when he wants the "big" things and already has spending money set aside. I think he'll do it. As long as some wretch doesn't get her hands on it later on. It has been fast because we knew how to pare down, set aside exactly what was needed for the bare bills, save as much as possible, and some small amount is now being added as investment. Some time next year, they'll get switched. The bigger savings will be all investment fund with a bit going into CDs. And I'll go back to my own personal having-fun-with-the-stock-market investing. I can make big bucks with that, even when the market is down. And God is good. That too. Moreso, because of that. :)

The softcover books available on Amazon are different from the "The Fig" by Ira Condit. They are "A Bibliography of the Fig" by Condit and his assistant Enderud from Hilgardia , an softcover agricultural periodical. It could be useful in tracking down old references to figs and might be of interest to a collector. However, "The Fig" would probably be of more interest to the average fig enthusiast. I would suggest reading the online edition first. If you find it interesting and your collecting urge extends to books as well as fig varieties, then consider buying the book.

Be aware you will probably pay a fee for closing out the IRA and moving it. Standard stuff, just so you know. Banks tends to charge higher management fees than a good discount brokerage, and offer a generally poorer choice of funds to pick from. If you are scared of the market and want to keep the money in CDs, check out the bank they are currently held at as to how their rates compare against the competition. The website http://cdrates.bankaholic.com/ shows you rates and can sort by term, but they do not verify the financial health of the bank. Do some homework here and pick a bank thatÂs safe even if not the highest fractional return. A lot of banks are in trouble but the FDIC doesnÂt publish that list so it can be hard to find out if a bank is real danger of being taken over. If you don't know how to move an IRA I would certainly not classify you as someone who should be investing in individual stocks! Mutual funds (stocks aka equities) and short-term bond funds would be a better investment. To move an account, open an account at any brokerage or financial institution  theyÂll usually let you do it on-line  first. See my caveats below about proper titling. THIS IS IMPORTANT! Once the account is active (entered into the system), the brokerage/FI will contact your motherÂs bank and get the funds transferred over. You do not and should not ever have to Âtouch the funds. Schwab ranks high for customer service and widest variety of available funds. Vanguard is discount but you can only invest in Vanguard funds - they have some very good ones but also some real dogs with similar names so it can be tricky. There's an analyst who posts on-line and he specializes in Vanguard funds only, with interesting analyses of why one fund is a good investment but another similar Vanguard might not be. This is fascinating reading but more than you probably want to do. Similar to Vanguard but with several funds ranked highly by Money magazine for overall return in their recent survey is T. Rowe Price. You might want to check the Money magazine website to read the full results of the survey article. Fidelity is the biggest pension funds broker/manager but I donÂt consider them the best from a funds standpoint. Caveats: The 2 critical things about Inherited IRAs are titling and distributions. You can have IRS difficulties if either of these is messed up. Wherever you move your IRA to, stay on top of these issues, because the IRS considers it your responsibility, no one else's. Titling an Inherited IRA: NEVER combine an Inherited IRA with your personal IRA funds. The title of the account should be: "Inherited IRA deceasedname fbo yourname". So if I inherit an IRA from my mother, it is titled "Inherited IRA Susan B. Anthony fbo JKom51". FBO means 'for benefit of' and it is acceptable to use the acronym. - Distributions must continue if your mother was taking them, but they are calculated on your life expectancy.

I had seen an article on this subject in the WSJ, so I needed to do a search to pull it up again. Here's the pros and cons: WSJournal Investing, November 2, 2008 IRAs May Be Ripe For Shift to Roth One of the simplest ways to take advantage of the continuing market turmoil: Convert your battered investments from a traditional individual retirement account to a Roth IRA. When you convert traditional IRA assets to a Roth, you have to pay the income taxes upfront on the account's value -- and in some cases, those values may be next to nothing at the moment. With a Roth IRA, there are generally no taxes on withdrawals or any future earnings, unlike with traditional IRAs. There's also no mandatory distribution schedule -- again in contrast with traditional IRAs, from which account holders must begin taking minimum distributions by April 1 of the year following the year they turn 70 years old. Plus, you can leave a Roth account intact for your heirs. (Heirs other than your spouse would have to take required withdrawals each year, but they generally wouldn't owe any tax on them.) To be eligible to convert traditional IRA assets to a Roth, your income must be $100,000 or less. So any hit that your paycheck has taken from the economic downturn might help you do a Roth conversion. (Starting in 2010, there is no longer an income limit for Roth conversions.) Neither a required IRA distribution nor the converted amount would count against the $100,000 income limit. If you are 70½ or older, you have to take this year's required distribution before converting any traditional IRA assets to a Roth. Withdrawal Rules Many IRA holders get tangled up in the "five-year" rule when they convert IRA assets to a Roth IRA: You have to hold those assets in a Roth for five years or until you turn 59½, whichever comes first, to make penalty-free withdrawals of converted amounts. Each conversion has its own five-year clock. But if you have already reached age 59½ and you convert traditional IRA assets to a Roth, you can withdraw the actual assets you convert at any time without worrying about a five-year deadline or penalties. It's a different story with any earnings on those assets: Again, you must have held a Roth account for five years to withdraw any earnings tax-free. But you don't need to worry about separating the converted funds from the earnings; that's because the withdrawal rules for Roth IRAs say that any distributions first come from contributions, then from conversions, and finally from earnings, says Ed Slott, an IRA consultant in Rockville Centre, N.Y. Chuck Bauer, a 62-year-old manager in Pittsburgh for Aker Solutions, an engineering and construction company, has a combination of market losses and lower-than-normal income this year. So he is taking the advice of a local financial planner, Bud Kahn, and converting his IRA to a Roth, he says. Mr. Bauer will have to pay about $29,000 in income tax on the conversion, but "we think the account has gone down about $32,000," says Mr. Kahn. "When the account recoups its losses, he will have made up the taxes that he paid. And then that recoupment is never going to be taxed again." Changing Your Mind What if you converted traditional IRA assets to a Roth earlier this year, and those assets have declined in value? In that case, you may want to "recharacterize" the Roth as a traditional IRA. It's a way, says Mr. Slott, to "erase the taxes" on value that has since disappeared. Frank Russo, a 66-year-old Verizon Communications retiree in Port Washington, N.Y., recharacterized IRA investments that he had converted to a Roth after watching their value fall at least 15%. "I don't have to pay tax on an amount that no longer exists," he says. To do a recharacterization,you have to use a "trustee-to-trustee" transfer, also called a direct rollover or direct transfer, to move the contribution from one IRA to another. Don't touch the money yourself, and make sure no checks get made out directly to you or deposited in your bank account. The assets are treated as if they never left the traditional IRA, Mr. Slott says. If you recharacterize your Roth as a traditional IRA by Nov. 30, you could then convert the lower-value assets to a Roth again as soon as Jan. 1, he adds. See IRS Publication 590, at www.irs.gov, for information about traditional and Roth IRAs.