<prompt> Human: I know that earnings have penalties for early withdrawal except in a few special cases, but is it true that I can withdraw part or all of my contributions without penalty? What keeps people from using their Roth as a savings account, just the risk? It seems well worth the risk to me when online savings accounts are only paying 1, but Ive never heard it brought up before.  <response>: Yes, you can withdraw contributions and that does imply you could use the Roth as a savings account. Of course, it depends on what you invest the Roth in -- if you buy volatile equity funds, then the Roths value will fluctuate up and down quite a bit. In contrast, if you keep it in cash or really safe investments, the principal will be safe but probably wont grow much.It is true that in doing this, you can use the Roth as an emergency fund. For instance, for someone thats just starting out, he or she could just contribute 5500 to the Roth IRA and keep it in cash. This Roth IRA serves as the emergency fund and if an emergency does occur, you can withdraw the money. Since emergencies are supposed to be rare, its more likely that there wont be an emergency. In such a case, a non-Roth emergency fund could eventually be built, and then the money in the Roth could be invested. Such a method would ensure that a person was able to max out the Roth IRA every year, even in the beginning where a person might not actually have enough money to invest 5500 and also maintain an emergency fund. 