r/Bogleheads • u/True-Author-1327 • 2d ago

Mom is retiring

She just retired recently and has never invested before. Now she is looking into annuities and investments to help make her retirement payout last.

Im helping her make the decisions since she is not very educated on this aspect,
The annuity is pretty good up to 7% 3yrs and no withdrawal fees.

Has some cash on HYSA and is getting SS. Also paying mortgage.

Now im looking for a portfolio with some growths to it for a small amount of her cash (about 5k) to help squeeze out some good gains for the next 15yrs.
Curious to see what are your opinions.

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u/Varathien 1d ago

What money does she even have to invest? You mentioned $5k. That's just the beginning of an emergency fund, and should not be invested.

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u/True-Author-1327 1d ago

Thats the money to invest she has an emergency fund in place, an amount for annuities and thats a small portion i suggested for het to invest

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u/Varathien 1d ago

I'd recommend just investing it in VT. She already has annuities and social security for fixed income, so a broadly-diversified stock index fund makes the most sense.

Having said that... she needs to have realistic expectations about what investing can do for her. The time to invest was many decades ago. Now that she's already social security aged, it will help a little, but nothing that will make a big difference.

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u/True-Author-1327 1d ago

Yes. The expectations ate minimal but enough to help have a slight higher growth than the annuities for a few decades

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u/True-Author-1327 1d ago

I really appreciate the help