<prompt> Human: My wife and I have the means to max out two Roth IRAs every year. She is skeptical about the whole stock market and doesnt want to lose everything We managed to open a Vanguard account for her and bought 3000 worth of their total market index fund.But since then she has refused to invest any more, and Im not sure how to convince her that it is whats best for our future.Does anyone have any advice on this matter?  <response>: There are two really important things to note here.The first is that an IRA is not an investment. Its a wrapper around investments for tax purposes. You can hold pretty much anything in there. You could open one and have a simple money market. Typically people hold stocks in there because stocks are long term investments and the nature of an IRA leads people to putting long term investments in there since they cant get at them anyway. Yes there are exceptions but Im keeping it simple.The second is something Ive heard Dave Ramsey say. There are two types of risk. Theres the risk of putting your money in an investment and losing it, and the risk of not investing your money and not keeping up with inflation. If you and your wife keep money in the bank and earn 1 while inflation is at 4 youre losing spending power every year. This is hard to see because youre still gaining money. Start by getting her to open an IRA and keeping the money in something safe like a money market or CD. You cant ever go back and catch up on IRA contributions. After that explain investing in the stock market. 