<prompt> Human: Hi rpersonalfinance! Ive been reading here for a few months now and I have finally saved up 5,500 to put into my Roth IRA. I signed up with Vanguard last month and needless to say, Ive been completely lost. Im rather tech-savvy but utterly lost when attempting to navigate their website or understand exactly how Im able to invest my money.My money started in the Vanguard Federal Money Market Fund, but nothing was happening to it, the website said 100 of my money was in short term reserves. So I ended up putting my 5,500 into the Vanguard LifeStrategy Growth Fund, and based on their allocation tool and advice to invest more aggressively while young Im 23 and more conservatively when older, I have my mix at 80 stocks and 20 bonds. I checked back a week later and my balance had increased by 20 5,520, I thought hey, thats really good, but I probably shouldnt expect most of that 20 if any to be there when I look again. The next week I logged in and my balance was 40 less 5,480 and I thought, well, the investment allocation I have is rather volatile, Im going to have to keep a close eye on this and maybe readjust. My goal is to have a bit more money for retirement, not to make a ton of money.I logged into my account today, about two or three weeks later and saw my balance below 5,400I can take the 100 or so loss, its the price of learning. The worst case scenario is that I lose money and I dont learn anything. So, I have two questions: Am I doing this completely wrong? When I first put my money into Vanguard I was under the impression that I was going to basically choose an allocation and itd be set. Ive been very thrown off by all of these different fund names and ticker symbols. If Im not doing this completely wrong, is my allocation as bad as Im feeling it is? Or is this sort of fluctuation normal?  <response>: It goes up and down everyday for the next 30 years. Look at it once a year. 