Should My Investments Be More Conservative?

This episode is sponsored by SmartVester. Connect with an investing pro for free at ramsysolutions.com slash invest. You're listening to Ramsey Everyday Millionaires where we talk investing, retirement, building wealth, and outrageous generosity. Jack is in New York. Hi, Jack. Welcome to the Ramsey show. Well, thank you very much, Dave. How are you today? Better than I deserve. What's up?

Well, I'm at the age now mid 50s to where you want to get to be conservative with your investments. However, for retirement, however, I don't have a retirement because of life choices that I've had to make throughout the years. So now that I'm finally in a financial position to where I can start making investments, I'm afraid to make liberal investments, to make money to actually have a retirement.

because I'm at that age to be conservative. So I really don't know what to do. And I'm not going to help you with this. You're not at the age to be conservative. I don't know who told you that, but they were wrong. Well, I don't have that many years to let go of this. You have plenty of time. You're only 50. OK. I'm not I'm not conservatively investing and I'm 63. So I'm investing in good growth stock mutual funds that are growing like a weed. And you need to be your broke.

That's well, I'm not broke, but I have no retirement whatsoever. Well, I mean, how much do you have? How much money do you have? I got about 20K in saving. Okay. Well, you're broke.

I mean, for 50 years old going into retirement, that would scare the crap out of me. You need like 250, right? Moving on. And so I'm not trying to scare you. I don't want you to panic, but you do need to get with it. As you said, and you recognize that. That's why you called. So what I would do is this. The thing I have figured out is there's two things that we are afraid of.

and fear is a positive thing in these situations. Number one thing we're afraid of is something we don't understand. So the first time you sat behind the wheel of a car, I distinctly remember I was 12, and Dad said, move the car around back. I left no gravel in the driveway. No one told me you weren't supposed to press down on the accelerator all the way to the floor.

I didn't because I didn't know what I was doing. So driving a car, I didn't know how to do it. I was afraid and I was really afraid after I screwed it up, right? But now we all have been driving cars for decades and we drive and don't think anything about it. It's like muscle memory. So you learn how to do the thing and you're no longer afraid of it. The second thing you're afraid of is something that will legitimately hurt you, standing in the middle of the interstate. You should be afraid an 18-wheeler is going to turn you into a bug.

Right? And so, yeah, that's a bear is standing in front of you. You should be afraid. That's a good thing. But the other is just you're afraid because you don't know how. And that's the investing thing. That's wisdom, but it's something that can be overcome.

I don't want to overcome my fear of bears. They will eat you. But I do want to overcome my fear of things I don't understand that can help me. And the fear goes away with knowledge. So sit down with a good smart vester pro. Click that at Ramsey Solutions and let them let the guys that we recommend begin to teach you and gradually start to understand and as your

confidence builds, then you'll easily increase the amount of money you start pouring into retirement-type investments, and you won't have to worry about the whole idea of conservative versus whatever. Bull crap, something you read on the internet, right?

So I completely understand that. That's absolutely true. Yeah, I was just going to echo that that right now you have no idea what you don't know and that it just paralyzes you. And so I think the quicker you can get seated with SmartVester Pro's, interview several, figure out the one that you've got the best chemistry with. There's that teacher relationship going on.

You can make up some ground pretty quick, but you've got to be aggressive. I would say Dave, beyond just the mindset of aggressive, I'd be doing some things if I were him to make some extra money and try to catch up. Where can I make an additional 10 grand, an additional 15 to 25, so you can play catch up and start stacking some money. When you begin to see that momentum, by the way, that gets really, really exciting and you start doing more of that.

A lot of people think that they got to have a side hustle just to pay off debt or just pay the bills. In this case, when someone is that age, to the extent that you can do some extra work and leverage your skill and experience to pour more money on top of the little fire, the bigger that fire gets, that would be a direct challenge in this situation for him. That's very good. And that reminds me, you know, when they're walking around out there in the world, people say,

the sayings that are just stupid, right? You know, here's one of them. What you don't know won't hurt you. What you don't know will kill you. That's a dumb but saying. You know, lack of knowledge will knock you out, man. I mean, that's a, you know, like you can just stick your head in the sand and I'm not talking about Jack here. I'm just saying in general, but yeah, it's a big deal to no new things all the time.

Thanks for tuning in to Ramsey Everyday Millionaires. To learn more about how to plan for retirement, visit ramsysolutions.com slash retire, or click the link in the show notes. Ramsey Solutions is a paid non-client promoter of participating pros. Learn more at ramsysolutions.com slash SmartVester.