Vanguard - Complete Newbie

[Holly Reagon]

I'm very new to all of this and have been listening to podcasts and reading the forums trying to educate myself and determine if i can take a leap at some point. In the mean time, one of the podcast said if you have a little bit of money sitting around, at least open a ROTH IRA, so I did. I took $500 out of my savings, opened an account on Vanguard, and there it sits. :-) I still need to read and learn about investing in stocks, bonds, mutual funds and feel completely uneducated enough to pick where to put the money. General advice is to put it into Target Retirement fund, thoughts? I'd love to start making passive income to get to a point to invest in a second house. I'm currently 47, work full time, have a 401k and employee stock plan through work, but I really don't want to work until 65. I know this amount is minimal, but I can work on that, I just needed to make some kind of move. :-)