So you think that you need to worry more about your current financial situation then retirement hunh? What if I told you that you can worry about both simultaneously?

You can use money from your IRA to assist in the purchase of your first home, higher education expenses, and certain hardships without incurring a penalty. As long as the money has remained in the IRA for 5 years, a withdrawl under these aforementioned reasons incurs no penalty.

Your IRA can be used to help offset costs for you, your spouse, your children, or your grandchildren for higher education or first time home purchasing. As you will see with more specifics in the FAQ section the catch is that you can only use up to $10,000 over your lifetime for house expenses. Two years after the sale of your home, you legally become a first time home buyer again. This of course means if you do not purchase another home before then.

Did you also know that you can borrow money from your IRA for up to 60 days tax-free? If you do this just make sure you repay the money back in 60 days to avoid taxes and the 10% withdrawal penalty. You can only do this once per 12 month period. And if you have two different IRAs, you can borrow from both at the same time, but you cannot borrow again until 12 months from now.

Unless you are in serious financial trouble you really need to invest some money into your IRA. Your IRA grows tax free. You can do a web search on IRA calculators that will show you how as little as $5 a week can grow into a large sum of money over the years.

Well once again, that is it in a nutshell. You cannot afford to not invest in your IRA. Well now that you know that you need to let's move on to the next level and take a look at some IRA investment opportunities that most people who have IRAs had no idea about.