<prompt> Human: I grew up in poverty. Not because my parents werent good with money, mind you. My parents are amazingly frugal and do amazingly well with what they have. But they werent born into money by any means; and both had a string of misfortune parents dying at young ages, businesses they worked for failing, injuries, etc that basically left us at the bottom of the middle class, at our best times.Now, growing up this way, I definitely learned how to stretch a dollar. I am frugal to the point of being a cheapskate; I know how to get good deals and use coupons and anything else I can do to save a buck. I never spend money on anything thats not absolutely necessary. Im not in debt, even though I did have to pay off a lot of medical bills due to not having insurance. Im damn good with money - I can stretch my meager 21k salary further than most anyone else can with three times that. Yes only 21k - thanks to the economy collapsing right as I got out of college, there are no jobs in my field and my skillset was limited aside from that. Im working on it.So Ive got that part down. My problem is that growing up the way I did, I never had any sort of education about things like 401ks and retirement plans. My parents will never be able to retire; they dont have a 401k or any of that, so they never bothered to tell me about it. I dont even know how much I should shoot to save for retirement, when I could think about possibly retiring, or where to put the money when I start saving it.I try to Google this stuff and I get lost in the terminology and finance-speak that I was never educated on. I feel like all of these websites are targeted towards upper-class businessmen who have worked in such things already, and already know all the terms and what-not. I dont know any of it. I feel very backwoods hillbilly blue collar at this point, Im embarrassed to be so ignorant.So Im asking you guys. Does anyone know of a good place to start? I mean for someone that really knows NOTHING about this stuff. Seriously, remember that I dont even know how a 401k works; I was taught that it was something meant for those white-collar folk in their big wig jobs, so I shouldnt bother knowing. Seriously, Im the beginner-est of the beginners. So I need a verrry basic tutorial.Help?!Thanks!!  <response>: So it looks like youre wondering about retirement plans...Basically when it comes time to retire, youll be able to receive social security payouts for retirement. However, this is a VERY meager amount, around the equivalent to minimum wage. So, youll likely want to supplement this amount with your own money that you have set aside. The government has a few plans that are tax-advantaged to help encourage citizens to save on their own. The most popular not sure if theres any other? are called an IRA and Roth IRA. These are basically just containers for you to place your money, and then you can invest them in these containers usually in stocksbonds. The only difference is you contribute to an IRA with PRE-TAX money, or money that has not had taxes taken out, and then you pay taxes on this money when you take the money back out, in retirement. A Roth IRA, you contribute money that has been taxed, and then you do not have to pay taxes again when you withdraw the money. This is a benefit over a regular investing account, where you would need to pay taxes on capital gains.A 401k is the same thing as an IRA, except it is managed by your employer and automatically taken out of your paycheck. Companies often offer a 401k matching program as an incentive.The opinion most often cited in this subreddit is to only contribute to your 401k enough to get any company match, then place the rest in a Roth IRA, and any remaining in an IRA note: theres legal contribution maximums. The reasoning behind this is that 401ks often have a lackluster selection of investments.I think thats a decent intro. If you just lurk this subreddit a bit youll pick up things youd never think of doing in relation to personal finance. 