I’m 58 years old and living in California with $137,000 in a Roth IRA, but I’m a bad investor and lost 8% last year — what can I do to secure my retirement savings?

How do you lose money in a Roth IRA?

A Roth IRA can be a great retirement account because it's funded with money you've already paid taxes on, which allows you to make tax-free withdrawals later in life. Contributions can always be taken out, but you can withdraw earnings with no taxes or penalties as long as you're aged 59.5 years or older and have had a Roth IRA account for at least five years.

When you have money in an IRA, you can choose to invest it — which can grow your savings. But unless you're keeping all of the money in cash or putting it toward FDIC-insured investments like a certificate of deposit (CD), your other options require taking a risk and facing potential losses while striving for a higher reward.

The level of risk you take may depend on what specific investments you invest in. Alternative investments, such as precious metals or cryptocurrencies, tend to come with high risk as they may be considered speculative assets. Buying shares of individual companies can also be risky since any returns are based on the performance of the business.

Meanwhile, investing in exchange-traded funds (ETFs) or mutual funds that track financial market indexes is seen as less risky since these options offer more portfolio diversity. They take a representative sample of stocks or bonds from an index, such as the S&P 500, and are typically inexpensive to invest in. Warren Buffett himself recommends low-cost index funds for average investors.

But past returns don't guarantee future success. Even though the S&P 500's average annual return rate is above 10%, there have been down years. Any investment can go through a bad period and lose money. If you invest for the long term, however, your risk can be minimized if most years your investments net positive returns.

Short-term losses could still be hard to cope with the older you get, though, when you need to rely on your funds soon.

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How can you secure your IRA?

Since risk is a part of investing, you can't really secure your IRA to avoid losing money unless you limit returns by investing only in cash or FDIC-insured investments. Doing this may leave money on the table, though.

Your best option may be to limit risk to a reasonable level given your age and investing timeline. A common rule of thumb is to subtract your age from 110 and put that percentage of your portfolio in the market. The rest can go into bonds or other safe fixed-income investments.

For the money you're putting into equities, choosing an investment like an S&P 500 index fund might be the way to go. You're essentially betting on the U.S. economy and big business, and with its history of positive returns, along with instant diversification, you have a solid chance of earning a decent amount of money. Even if there's a down period, if you can afford to wait for the market to recover, ideally you could still come out ahead.