First off, I may need a little clarification - when you say IRA, I'm assuming you mean a ROTH-type 'post-tax' retirement account vehicle? Or is it something else?
As for her results, that seems....improbable, even if the target date fund has a high bond percentage (which it shouldn't, if it's 2055 - a quick check of vanguard and fidelity has their funds at over 10% ytd growth), unless she just-so-happened to put in more money right at the 'top' of the day-to-day fluctuation multiple times - in which case she was just supremely unlucky AND you both just looked at the results super recently, with the market having just downturned.
Granted, 3k (especially if done over time) isn't gonna see a ton of actual dollar growth compared to, say, 100k, but growth still should be higher than that, lol.
Re: speaking with an advisor - just be careful - a good chunk of advisors will try to steer you towards their own custom allocations - and while some are good in that they 'could' out-perform the market overall, they almost always have much higher expense ratios that translate into more money for your advisor, no matter if you out-perform the market, or under-perform it - over the last 15 years, approx. 8 out of 10 advisors have not beaten the market overall, especially taking their fees/expense drag into consideration.
The allocation of just investing into several index funds (mainly for diversification purposes) yourself is, at least historically speaking (which admittedly doesn't guarantee future returns), the next 'least risky' stock-type option if you want to venture outside the target date funds
Depending on the IRA type and/or which brokerage you're using, you can sometimes (usually, at this point) just buy ETFs (or at least, their mutual fund index equivalents), at least at the big dogs like Vanguard or Fidelity.
The main difference between ETFs and mutual funds being that you can buy/sell ETFs immediately (like stocks), while mutual funds have to wait until end of day/market to activate buy/sell orders - though depending on which brokerage you use, you may pay brokerage fees for ETFs (though this is going away for more and more of the bigger investment firms) - ETFs are typically a little more 'liquid' capital.
Honestly, target date funds are about as 'easy'/set-and-forget as investing in the stock market gets while still offering decent(ish) returns, though they typically lag somewhat behind pure index fund options due the aforementioned bond component and higher fees/expense ratios, since they're more actively managed by someone behind the scenes changing the stock/bond allocation over time.
IMO, switching to like...3 or 4 index funds is...only a little more initial research/work, just as 'non-risky' due to diversification (if properly selected), has much lower overall expense ratios, and have historically out-performed target funds (just look at the S&P historical averages versus target funds)....but it WILL swing up and down more number-wise, especially as we're also in one of the biggest bull runs in the market's history.
IF you did go into index funds, you'd also probably want to theoretically re-balance your investments %-wise every couple of years, if not every year, and would (theoretically) have to manually re-direct some of your investments into safer/less risky options like bonds later on in life.
So it does depend on how much work/research you two wanna do.
