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Originally Posted by MonkeyMama
I believe a ROTH contribution you can withdraw penalty-free and tax-free.
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You're correct MonkeyMama - You can withdraw your contributions from a Roth IRA anytime without tax or penalty. This applies to contributions only - you can not take out the earnings on your contributions, or you will pay taxes & penalties. It also only applies to contributory Roth IRAs, not Roths that were converted from traditional IRAs.
For that reason, I generally recommend that clients (I'm a financial planner) contribute to both their emergency savings account and a Roth IRA (if they are eligible) at the same time.
I've found that most people have a hard time saving the recommended 3-6 months of living expenses for an emergency fund, so if they waited to start saving for retirement until they had funded their emergency fund, they'd never get started saving for retirement!