Yes that is what the Roth does. I have a traditional and a Roth and if I need to take money out early, I will do so from the traditional one first to preserve any gains in the Roth for tax free distributions at retirement. My hope is I have enough money in there with gains coming here and from other places that I will not need to add more and can just reinvest what is in place as I go. I created these retirement accounts myself though, employer plans are not necessarily always as receptive to being able to purchase individual stocks. The risk of doing so is something many employers would like to avoid as they don't want employees losing all of their money in a stock.