Bill O’Reilly’s Financial Advice

Posted by Lorren on October 10, 2008

The other day, some guy got on one of the morning talk shows and stated that if you needed any money for the next five years, you should get out of the market. That’s fairly sound financial advice for any time period. If you were going to ask… Dave Ramsey, as an example… he would tell you that you should not invest money into stocks that you needed to get at in the next 10 years. Many other financial advisors suggest that you should have a balanced portfolio, reducing the percentage that you have in stocks as you get closer to retirement, and that stocks are not a good place to keep short-term investments.

So Bill O’Reilly surprised me when he criticized the guy that said to get all your short term investments out of stocks. I suppose that his expertise is in news, not finances. He said that if you get out of stocks now, you might miss it when the markets turn up. That is true, but if you are investing for the short term, you don’t want your investments in something volatile.

Historically, the stock market has been up for every 10 year period in its existence. So if your investments are for 10 years or more, you’re probably good. But as the original guy said, if you need the money in the next 5 years, history is not necessarily on your side.

If I’m going to make financial decisions, I’d listen to guys like Dave Ramsey and not Bill O’Reilly. My grandma has some money invested for me as my inheritance, in fact, and I’m not calling her to ask me to get it out.