<prompt> Human: My wife is not comfotable with investing. This includes bonds, stocks, mutual funds etc. She sees a savings account as the best place to put her earned money and is not comfortable with putting her earnings elsewhere in fear of losing her money. She sees investment products as a form of gambling. She is well educated but is still very hesitant about these issues. While her parents invest, her brother is also uncomfortable with investing. perhaps there are other people out there that feel the same way.What do you recommend to these people to get them more comfortable with investing? I lurk on this sub quite a bit and my wife and i have a good emergency fund saved up and we both have retirememt accounts although that took some convincing my wife to set up too. Without providing details, we are in a good place financially. Currently im looking to have my wife open up her own Roth IRA but she is uncomfortable with this idea.Shes OK with me doing it for her but it would be nice if she would be comfortable with it on her own. How would you break it down for her so that she would be more comfortable investing?Assistant: Gambling is a game with odds literally rigged in favor of the house. Theres a lot of uncontrolled randomness and there is often little input from you once the game has started. Once you put your money at stake, you have little control.Investing is putting your money to work and it has its own risks but you minimize them by making yourself informed and reacting to events in the market, some of which are random but most arent. You can buy government bonds with a virtually guaranteed return or you can buy real estate, improve the lot, and sell it for a return. Like gambling, you only put up what you are willing to lose, but unlike gambling, there are varying levels of risk and return. You can make safe investments or you can make very risky ones.Even leaving your money in the bank has its risks, the major one being inflation. Youre making an investment in a liquid, accessible fund but the rate of return is negative because it loses value while it just sits there.Human: Right and I think she gets that. Part of the problem is that she felt her money would be inaccessible once its in a retirement account, but I explained wed have to pay a high tax rate to cash it out. I guess she wants extra extra emergency funding or something...  <response>: Well, is her emergency fund big enough for her? Everyone has a different comfort level there - some people are fine with just a few months, some people want a year of expenses, some even more. Perhaps you just need to get that emergency fund to the point where she feels very secure, at which point she will be more open to putting additional savings somewhere less accessible. 