Personal Finance

Fortune of the Day: Long-Term Investments and Short-Term Fears Don’t Mix


In this new segment, Carmen offers a daily tip for securing your fortune in troubled times.

Monday’s tip: Don’t let long-term investments – your retirement, your home – be subject to short-term fears.

You need to eat tomorrow. That’s a short-term liability you need to cover with a short-term asset. But you also need to eat in 20 years, as financial advisor Ray Lucia says. That should be covered with a long-term asset. The two should never cross.

On investing, Gregg Fisher of Gerstein Fisher says you should look at buying stocks like buying a piece of a business and owning part of those profits over a long period of time. With the market still down substantially from its highs, he suggests taking some risk and buying stocks for the long term.