Personal finances:

[glatt]

mtp, I know you don't want risk, but at your age, the stock market is the way to go if you are looking at retirement. Over the very long run, it's historically been pretty safe. My own retirement savings are in the stock market, and they have fluctuated wildly over the last two years, but they are still there and doing ok. It's when you are the youngest that you can tolerate the most risk with retirement funds. It isn't until you get close to retirement age that you should start moving out of the risky market and into lower fixed rate safe funds.

If you are serious about retirement, I'd encourage you to look closely at a Roth IRA and put your money into a couple of mutual funds in a Roth IRA.

If this is money you want to keep access to now and want to be able to get at it when you want, I'd leave it in a savings account.