contribution that you get with a traditional IRA, but all growth is tax free after the account has been opened 5 years. There are provisions for "look back" to make up for the fact that you weren't making contributions all along. Might be worth looking into opening a Roth for both you and your wife and then using make up contributions to get a good chunk of edig and/or ptsc in tax free growth. I rolled my traditional IRA over into a Roth when edig and ptsc were both in single digits and actually was able to report a loss on that roll over. Now everything is tax free. What a country!