Retirelementary?

Note: Boring financial rant ahead, procede at your own risk.

Ok, I had a bit of a conversation yesterday with some family members and was amazed at the ideas that they had when it came to retirement and money. Not that I am an expert or anything, but I do read articles and ask questions and have become well informed on what to do with my own family's savings. I have a brother who thinks that the best investment vehicles ever are CDs. No, not the musical kind, but Certificates of Deposit, the banking kind. Now I will admit that I am fond of CDs as a means of saving money as you can definitely get a better interest rate than in a plain old fashioned saving account, however, there are so many better options, like mutual funds, low risk stocks, or even blended funds. Sigh. I also have another relative, who shuns banks because he is afraid of the company who owns the bank going belly up and keeps all his money in government bonds. Yes, almost no interest, government bonds. My mother has started to buy into this crap also, as she yanked her investment money out of a nice safe mutual fund and dropped it into a non-interest bearing checking account/savings account mix. The scary thing about it is these are the more enlightened people in my family, as I have casually asked a couple of times about other family members 401Ks and was shocked to find that my siblings and such were passing up the free money that these accounts offer. Is everyone like this?