<prompt> Human: I turned 30 a few days ago, and I think like a lot of people whove turned that age, its resulted in a great deal of introspection about the current state of my life and all of the successes and failures that I experienced throughout my 20s. Consequently, I feel like I really need to get a better handle on improving my finances and my career and changing how I handle my money.Heres the quick rundown of my situation: INCOME: I make a little over 34,000 a year doing government non-profit work, which I know is pretty pathetic compared to a lot of the incomes of other posters here. However, Im fortunate to have excellent benefits great vacationsick time I pay almost nothing for health insurance in addition to being enrolled in a statewide pension fund for public employees. Im hoping to increase my income and career opportunities by moving to an urban area probably out-of-state within the next year. I realize that will increase my expenses substantially, too, but for various personal and professional reasons Im looking to finally move myself out of the boonies. Moreover, Im lucky in that my mom recently told me that shes going to be giving me 14,000 a year for the next couple of years as part of my inheritance so that I wont have to pay taxes on it in the event that something happens to her. EXPENSES: I live in rural Ohio where theres an extremely low cost of living. I rent, and I dont have any debt no car payment or student loans. I have one credit card that I pay off every month. SAVINGS: Im usually able to save a little over 1,000 every month. I have around 50,000 in the bank right now, but no investments of any kind.This is primarily what Im looking to change. Ive always considered myself to be good with money at least in the sense of being able to live within my means, pay bills on time, and stick to a budget. But Im admittedly clueless about the stock market, and I dont have anyone close to me who I can turn to for advice. My dad died when I was young, and my mom has never been into investing. Im not at all concerned about making a quick buck Im focused on building wealth for myself and potential future family for 10, 20, 30, 40 years down the road. From everything that Ive read, it looks like investing in a Roth IRA might be my best route. But for someone like me, theres a pretty overwhelming amount of information online about how I should proceed. My primary worries relate to how hands-off I can or should be when it comes to picking investments especially since I know very little at this point in time. Im also concerned about the potential of losing my savings are there any risks or disadvantages about Roth IRAs that frequently fail to get mentioned? Is it a bad idea to talk to a financial adviser at my bank about what I should do? Any advice or suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks a bunch! Assistant: There is a wealth of information in the side bar. We do not have the complete scope of your situation and experience with investing. You will be able to absorb more information at a faster rate by reading it for yourself. I do not wish to offend you or be rude in the slightest. Simply speaking from my own experience, the sidebar and wiki were invaluable to me. Only you will be able to personalize your investment strategy to your liking. This sub will always be happy to help you with more specific questions in regard to your investing strategy.Human: Thanks, I guess? For what its worth, I did read the sidebar. I didnt see anything mentioned about any potential risksdownsides for investing in a Roth IRA. Or if any other alternative options exist for someone in my shoes. We do not have the complete scope of your situation and experience with investing.My post literally said I dont have any experience with investing. :  <response>: The risk is not so much with a Roth IRA account, but it is just a part of investing in general. A Roth IRA is where you take post-tax income and invest for your retirement. You can always take out your contributions penalty-free, but any earnings like interest, dividends, capital gains, etc. will incur a penalty if you are not of retirement age ex. if you put in 10k into your Roth IRA and it grows to 12k, you can take out 10k without any penalty. When you take out money during retirement both contributions and earnings, it will be 100 tax-free unlike a traditional IRA where you can defer paying income tax now by investing pre-tax dollars to pay it later in retirement. Since youre already in a low income bracket, you may not get much benefit from a traditional IRA vs. a Roth IRA and the Roth has the flexibility of taking your contributions out whenever you want. Now that youve set up a retirement account, making your investment selections is where the risk comes in. An easy way to start is to do a basic three-fund portfolio Here, you pick a risk profile which will determine what kind of asset allocation you should have. So the higher the risk youre willing to take - which means higher volatility - the more stocks you might have, and in the converse, you might hold more in cash or bonds, etc. I think the rule of thumb is 100 - your age of stocks, so you would be at 70 stocks and 30 bonds fixed income. Lets say that youre uncomfortable with that level of risk and would prefer to be more conservative - thats perfectly fine, especially if youre just getting your feet wet. After that, you pick the index funds that represent each sector of the allocation and maintain the percentages. You can just use the ones listed on that page until you learn more about funds to experiment with picking your own. After that, you just leave it and rebalance like 1X a year to see if you want to adjust your asset allocation cause something in your life the world has changed. 