In the UK normal employees are automatically enrolled to invest in their pension (life savings for retirement) and this will be at least partly in the stock market. It is normal and sensible.
In fact I wouldn't be surprised if you could lose your financial advisor's license for suggesting everyone keep their life savings as cash - it's such bad financial advice.
If you keep your life savings as cash you are optimising for the 99th percentile of bad outcomes for the global economy, and losing out massively in every other likelihood.
>it could even be $0.00
It is unlikely that the value of the S&P500 will be zero in our lifetimes. If it is, your 50,000 US dollars won't be worth much.
It's normal and sensible to invest money you are okay with potentially never seeing again, yes. I don't think we are even disagreeing, just probably not on the same page what "savings" exactly is.
I consider savings as monies that shouldn't "just" go away (like investments failing), monies that are expected to always be there for when their time comes. That sort of money should be handled with the worst case scenarios accounted for, you presumably depend on that money (either now or in the future) for your life.
>It is unlikely that the value of the S&P500 will be zero in our lifetimes. If it is, your 50,000 US dollars won't be worth much.
Never say never, the Great Depression was bad enough it took a second world war for everyone to get out of the funk.
In fact I wouldn't be surprised if you could lose your financial advisor's license for suggesting everyone keep their life savings as cash - it's such bad financial advice.
If you keep your life savings as cash you are optimising for the 99th percentile of bad outcomes for the global economy, and losing out massively in every other likelihood.
>it could even be $0.00
It is unlikely that the value of the S&P500 will be zero in our lifetimes. If it is, your 50,000 US dollars won't be worth much.