The Roth Individual Retirement Account is a retirement instrument that was first created in 1977. It provides the flexibility to use several types of investments (stocks, bonds…etc) to fund the account. Along with no set withdraw age, ability to withdraw funds without penalty and a cap of five thousand dollars for investors below 49 and six thousand dollars for those fifty and older it has some strong points over a traditional IRA. There are three points that you need to know about Roth IRA Qualifications though before you obtain one.
(1) You have a limitation on contributing with only earned income resources. If you made the income you can use it to fund the IRA. If it is income from investments, social security, entitlements or other non earned sources you cannot use that income to fund the account.
(2) Lower income limit on investing in the account per year. The limit here is that you cannot invest more the the IRA than you made in a year.  Say you made $2000 last year for total taxable income.  You could only invest $2000 in the IRA even though the maximum contribution per year is $5000/$6000 dollars.
(3) Upper income limits on personal income and investing in a Roth Account.  For both individual and joint returns there are two significant income levels.  The first is the limit for full investment into the Roth IRA which is in 2010 $105,000 for a individual or $166,000 for a couple. From that point down the amount you can contribute is gradually reduced until you reach $120,000 for an individual and $176,000 for a couple. At the upper end of the scale ($119.999) the maximum contribution for a year would be $200 dollars.
Even the best Roth IRA has a range of options and strengths that would help your future financial planning. Go through the above three checkpoints and if you have no problems there get a account to add to your future financial security.