[mback00]

I take it you are a young person... First max out your company 401K with as much contribution to the ROTH option as you can afford... invest it in the lowest fee broad market matching index fund (Hint: S&P500) you can find. OK... now hopefully you are down with this and you still aren't eating into that 80K... If you don't need this money for a house, Well... over the long haul investment in the broader stock market "historically" doubles investments every 7 years. So, I'd suggest you open a cheap online brokerage account and first invest as much as you can into a ROTH and drop both ROTH and excess into an (again S&P500?) index mutual fund with the lowest expense ratio that you can find... and... try not to look at it again for the next 30 years except to convert as much each year into ROTH as possible. After 30 years you will hopefully look back into your account and have about $1.5M in that account with... being able to pull some significant amount of that investment out _tax free_. If you do need some of it for a house try to avoid 30 year loans and elect for 10-20 year loans.