<prompt> Human: Hi all,My mom has always been on a tight budget since she divorced my dad. She recently downsized her home and will have more flexibility, so I wanted to work with her on a budgeting plan.It seems that she has no retirement accounts, which, at her age 55 is definitely not ideal. Im having her sign up for her work 401k to get the match; we will also set up an IRA.She had some individual stocks in the years before 2008 and ended up selling everything at the bottom of the dip. Ever since she has been very dismissive of investing and risk etc. I am going to try and explain that this time around she will be doing ETFs that will disperse risk and that not investing will cause her to lose money due to inflation. She keeps telling me she wants to keep the risk at the bare minimum. Not really sure how to approach.Thanks in advance for your advice.  <response>: Risk tolerance is a personal decision. It is a very poor idea to tell someone to take on more risk than they want to take on; when the bad outcome materializes, do you want to be held responsible for it?The timeline to retirement also matters here. You can start making penalty-free withdrawals from IRAs at age 59.5, which isnt that far away for your Mom. One rule of thumb I like is that if you are certain youre going to need to access some capital within the next 5 years, that capital doesnt belong in the stock market.Skipping a 401k match is a bad idea because its basically free salary that you are turning down, so good on you for catching that. However, Id recommend conservative investments based on a target-date approach for both the 401k and whatever IRA money is invested. 