In a traditional IRA you contribute money to your retirement that you don't pay taxes on. It's a tax deferred account. But once you retire, you'll owe taxes on what you take out.

A Roth IRA is the opposite. You pay taxes on the money you put in, but you won't owe anything when you take it out. A lot of people like the Roth option because your money grows tax free, you don't have to start taking distributions at a particular age (like you do with a traditional IRA), and you can pass it along to your heirs.

Up until now, this type of conversion to a Roth IRA was available only to people who made less than $100,000 a year. But for this year and going forward, anyone can do it.

You benefit from converting to a Roth IRA if your tax bracket is likely to be higher when you take out the money, says Chris McDermott of Fidelity Investments.

The younger you are the better a Roth conversion looks. That's because your money has more time to grow tax free. [Read the full article]

The unemployment rate in Spain reached 20% in the first quarter, the Spanish government announced Friday, with 4.6 million people out of work in the country.

The rate is up from 19% in the previous quarter, and represents the second-highest unemployment rate in the 27-member European Union, after Latvia, according to Eurostat, the EU's statistics service.

Analysts said the first quarter of the year is historically poor for Spain because of a drop in labor-intensive activity like construction, agriculture and tourism.

Span's prime minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, told Parliament on Wednesday he believes the jobless rate has peaked and will now start to decline. [Read the full article]

As Greece barreled closer to the edge of a debt default this week, fears that the crisis would infect other countries rattled the world's financial markets. "It's not a question of the danger of contagion," Angel Gurria, the head of the Organization for Economic Cooperation, said. "Contagion has already happened. This is like Ebola."

If Gurria is right, who's next? Many analysts and economists point to Portugal, the European Union's poorest country, with Spain following close behind. "There is a very high likelihood that Portugal will be the next one to run into trouble," says Nariman Behravesh, chief economist for IHS Global Insight.

That's especially true if the 16 euro-zone countries get their act together and deliver a 45-billion euro bailout package to Greece as promised, a scenario similar to what happened to Bear Stearns in the banking crisis. Then Portugal may end up being the first to default. [Read the full article]

Honda Motor Co. is recalling 167,000 cars from its luxury Acura division because of the risk of a fire in the engine compartment.

The automaker is recalling Acura TSX sedans with 2.4-liter 4-cylinder engines from the 2004 to 2008 model years because hoses that carry power steering fluid could become brittle and begin to crack. Power steering fluid could then leak out and come into contact with hot exhaust parts causing smoke and possibly a fire.

Honda has only received notice of one incident resulting in a fire, the automaker said in an announcement.

Honda dealer will repair the problem by installing a new power steering hose, o-ring gasket and replacing the power steering fluid. [Read the full article]