Sean Pyles

She has a pension through IPERS and access to 403B, but no employer match.

She doesn't have any other savings account yet.

Here's what I'm thinking so far.

Keep about 20K, which is six months of expenses for her in a high yield savings account as an emergency fund.

Max out a Roth IRA for 2025 plus 2026, 14,500 total and put 15 to 25K in a brokerage account and finally contribute about 15 to 25% of her income in a Roth 403B and live off the extra savings.

Normally, I'd say traditional contributions would be better because she's low income, but the funds are already close tax.

I'd like her to max out to 403B, but that might be too aggressive for her and a big shift.

I'm open to any other suggestions on how to put her money to work.

Thanks.

this post because it gets into so many questions around when do you give people advice unsolicited financial advice and when do you mind your own business even if you see someone who's maybe missing a bunch of big opportunities what we would see is maybe low hanging fruit

What would you do if you were in the situation, if you were dating someone, they had all this money just doing nothing in a standard savings account and you see they could be investing it or maybe maxing out their retirement accounts and they're just not.

How do you broach that?

I would be more upset about them going to strangers on the internet than just having the conversation with me.

A lot of it comes down to

who the person is that you're working with what your relationship is with them what their relationship with their own money is because if money is a big stressor to them bombarding them with these ideas like maxing out a Roth IRA and opening a brokerage account could cause them to just shut down or feel like you're imposing your will upon them which could make a rift in your relationship which is the opposite of what this guy wants it seems

Yeah.

So.

I'm just trying to think about what I would do in that situation.

I think I would probably have had a number of money conversations before this one to understand their values and what they want.

And then if I learn about $70,000, which is a lot of money, I want to know why that was in there.