<prompt> Human: A little about me first. Im in my late 40s. High school education. Ive lived a bumpy foolish life, and have just a tiny amount in a 401k, which would equal about 200 dollars a month it says. Its depressing and embarassing. Luckily I dont have any debt to speak of, car is paid and reliable. Credit card paid. And now I have 90k in the bank, and no idea what to do with it. Its legal money, but sitting in a bank account isnt great.I desperately want a decent retirement. Old age scares me, and being too old to work with no income scares me more. I need to put this 90k toward retirement, but how? Theres so much information out there, and being safe with this money it top priority. I dont want to lose it to some market crash or bad investment. This money is a lifeline to a retirement I thought was out of reach. What should I do that is safe?EDIT: Thanks to all for the good advice. This really helps. I will be looking into all of this!  <response>: Im assuming by decent retirement, you mean being able to stop working altogether, and live on savings for the rest of your life. 90k is not going to do it, unless you plan on dying 3 years after retirement or something. So, what you need to do is everything you can to increase your holdings. Note that this requirement is not compatible with it being safe, in the sense that you can guarantee you wont have a 30-50 loss in a single year, but, disclaimers about past performance not predicting future returns aside, it should equal out over time.Keep aside enough for your 6 month emergency fund in a savings account, and get as much of the rest into an SP index fund as possible. Youre going to need to ride this out for a minimum of 20 years in order for the volatility aspect to work itself out. Over those 20 years, keep adding as much to it as you can. Get as much as you can into tax-advantaged accounts 401k, IRA. Youd be a perfect candidate for a Roth IRA if you dont have one already. 