The Stanford Student Enterprises Capital Group, a student-run financial organization that offers banking services to student groups, held a drop-in information session last Friday to educate the student body about retirement savings accounts with particular emphasis on Roth IRAs, or Individual Retirement Accounts.

IRAs allow people to capitalize on tax advantages to save for retirement. Roth IRAs are different from traditional IRAs because they allow the account owner to invest the funds in both stocks and mutual funds. Many people prefer Roth IRAs because withdrawals and deposits can be made tax-free. There are also fewer limitations on withdrawals from Roth IRAs than from traditional retirement accounts.

The event was part of the Capital Group’s educational initiative on retirement. While professionals and faculty members usually speak at the group’s workshops, the Roth IRA information session was led entirely by students.

“The SSE Capital Group trains us to offer informal educational advice — we’re not acting as investment advisors,” said junior Max Mednik, fund manager for the Capital Group. “We want people to know we can help them in an informal setting. It’s just like office hours for teachers.”

While the organizers, which included freshman Capital Group members Own Li and Divya Nettimi, were available to answer questions on all aspects of investment, many students who attended came with questions on Roth IRAs. Because those in lower income brackets can contribute more to a Roth IRA fund, Mednik said that the account is a good choice for students.

“Our purpose is to get a lot of information that is useful to students out to them since a lot of the information is hard to access,” Nettimi said.

“We want to make the office hours as applicable to everyone as we can,” Mednik said. “The title Roth IRA day is to attract more people — people have heard about it. We also want people to learn about investing in general through an interest in the Roth IRA.”

Mednik offered general advice to most of the students who visited.

“Be regular about investing,” he said. “Set goals, like depositing $100 a month. And learn as much as you can. There’s no bad investing or wrong investing. The most important thing is to start out.”

The five students who took advantage of the office hours ranged from juniors to a fifth year graduate student. In general, they said that the information session gave them a foundation of investment knowledge.

“I was expecting personal investment advice and the event met my expectations, although from the advertising poster, I expected at least one professional banker [to be present],” junior Charles Hallford said.

Overall, SSE Capital Group members said they were pleased with the small but enthusiastic turnout.

“These office hours can be pretty sporadic,” he said. “Sometimes we get a lot of people and sometimes a few. But honestly as long as we can help one person — it’s worth it and we’re happy.”