Thanks, everyone! My new employer does offer a 401k, but I won't be eligible to join until my 1 year anniversary in October. My former employer (where I worked for most of 2016) did not offer one. All of that was factored into my Tax Guy's suggestion.
Let's say I take his advice and open the IRA for 2016. Since I'm totally new to the investing game, and I feel I don't have enough time to adequately research anything before opening this IRA, would it be advisable to open a Traditional IRA at my local bank now? Pros: little to no fees, convenience, familiarity, etc. Then once I've done my research, would I be able to transfer the bank IRA to Vanguard or something comparable? Or would the recommendation be to just go straight with Vanguard and learn as I go?
By the way, I'm only able to contribute the $5,500 for 2016 at this time. I'm not able to plop another $5,500 in for 2017 as one poster suggested. My tax guy says making just the 2016 contribution now is fine, but we were discussing only bank IRAs, not going through a brokerage. I'm not seeing anything about minimums on the Vanguard site, so I think just the 2016 max contribution would be OK for now.
Thanks, again!