Article: What is Long-Term Investing?

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Wealth Advisor, Carson Wealth

When people think about the term “long-term investing,” they think about the time they have from the date of their initial investment until they need to start using the investment for retirement, education or whatever their goal may be. The one thing that many of us forget when investing is that once we reach the time when we need to use the investment – be it 5, 10 or more years – the reality is that we’ve reached a milestone, not our destination. Consider this. Let’s say you’re 50 now and want to retire when you’re 60. You actually have the initial 10 years before retirement and all of the rest of your life after retirement. In the case of someone retiring at age 60, you could have 40-plus more years of income needs from your investments. It is always our goal to be able to allocate your funds according to these periods of time – both before and after the goal milestone –for your investments.

It is important to reassess your situation periodically to make sure that your goals are still the same, and determine whether you are using the right types of investments to help you work toward those goals. For example, we might ask why we are carrying the burden of more risk in our investments when all we really need to attain our goals is a 5 percent rate of return. Maybe you need to get a 9 percent rate of return to reach your goals. What will it take to get you where you want to be? It is important that you take a step back and realize the amount of risk you can tolerate before you try to move forward. If you don’t, it can spell disaster for the attainability of your goals in the time period you set – or even at all. Long-term investing can mean a certain amount of years before you need an investment as a whole or it can mean for the rest of your life. Determine what long-term investing means to you. The qualified staff at Carson Wealth can then help you decide which investment strategy is best for you. Securities offered through Linsco Private Ledger Member NASD/SIPC and An Investment Advisor

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