Marielle Segarra

As the economy around you is growing and more transactions are happening and businesses are growing, stocks are going to be going up and you want to be a part of that.

You don't want to get left behind.

So that's a reason to invest in general.

A good one.

But the reason to put your retirement savings into one of these special retirement-specific accounts...

That is all about taxes.

Amanda writes in her book that you can think of retirement accounts as a kind of tax shelter for your investments, a container where your money can grow, shielded from taxes while it does.

And that's takeaway one.

Retirement accounts are not just a vehicle to let your money grow over time for when you're ready to stop working.

They also have tax benefits.

Now, there are two main types of retirement accounts.

On the one hand, you have your traditional accounts.

That could be an IRA, a 401K, a 403B, something like that.

With these, you take a certain amount of your income and shield it from taxes.

Mark Gallegos is a CPA and a tax partner at the accounting firm Portie Brown in the Chicago area.

He gave me an example.

And let's say he currently pays about 25% of his income to the government in taxes.

Now he won't have to pay taxes on $20,000 of that income because it's going into a tax shelter.

So the math is 25% savings on $20,000.

And then after you invest the money, it grows tax-free.