<prompt> Human: I am quite confused at what my parents did with this Roth IRA account. I was told by my father that he had opened it up several years ago 2007 and put 2500 in there. Well, as of today, it has 2610 in it. I went in and poked around the site, American Century. I downloaded the CSV of all the transactions that have occurred since the account was opened and it looks like the money is being invested in money market. I asked my father what it was and why it was invested in that particular way. He said that it was a low yield, low risk investment and that I should stick to it for the low risk factor, but at a very low interest rate. The Maintenance fee is 12.50year and that negates almost any of the interest earned. Obviously there is not a lot of money in there so the 12.50 makes it a huge hit on the returns.Here is a screenshot personal information removed of the CVS file I downloaded edited for visual appeal.I just read the post from yesterday about Compound Returns with all the cool charts. Well, everyone here talks about Vanguard-this and Vanguard-that. So, I got to thinking that perhaps I should change my plan to Vanguard and NOT go with a Money Market.Here are my stats: Married, 32 years old, 1 child, renting a house, combined take home income of 7kmonth, maximum contributions to 401k with both our respective employers, 0 credit card debt, 250month car payment. We have no IRA or Roth IRA account of our own yet. I just recently got a higher paying job that affords us to start contributing to those accounts. We are late and we will probably regret starting late on this, but it has to be done. So, my questions are:- Stick with American Century, but change the investment from Money Market to something else?- Move to Vanguard completely and invest there?- Based on my financial stats, what would be the better investment method?Now that we are making good money, we have started saving to do the max contributions to our Roth IRA account for 2014. We have set that money aside until we had a educated and informed decision as to how and where to put the Roth IRA money.Assistant: Money market funds are designed such that you dont lose principal - at the expense of almost no return. I recommend reading up on the 3-fund portfolio moving your IRA to a low cost provider like Vanguard, Fidelity, or Schwab, and moving your IRA money into index funds.Human: Thank you for the reply. I am looking at the 3-fund link you gave me. I am also reading the sidebar and getting all the terminology down as well. That said, we plan on moving our money to Vanguard soon - research pending. As far as index funds go, American Century had this investment option:  <response>: Move it to Vanguard and just put it in a target retirement fund until you figure out if there is something else that interests you. Right now it looks like youre not really invested in anything just money market funds which are very low risk, very low return.Bonus. If youre looking to eventually contribute to an IRA youll already have it open with vanguard and can just transfer money in. I do a direct deposit from my paycheck into my IRA.Note: It doesnt have to be Vanguard, but most people myself included have nothing but good things to say about them. 