and the fifth type of account that will earn you free money is a 401k and typically this option is available through your work or maybe it's a 403b if you work for the government or you're a teacher it allows employees the benefit of having retirement savings taken out of their paychecks before taxes so as you can see there are a lot of numbers at play here so I would highly recommend looking at an investment calculator you can find one on Ramsey solutions.com you can start plugging in these numbers and usually with a 401k your employer will do a match so they'll match up to 4% or 5% and that is free money.