Hello podcast friends. I'm Laura Adams your host and personal finance

author speaker and consumer advocate who's been producing this show since 2008.

The mission here is very simple. It's to give you knowledge, resources,

and motivation to manage your money the best way possible and create a richer life.

So before we get started, I want to take a moment just to say a few words about what's

been going on with the stock market. There's been so much

volatility and uncertainty going on and my message here is don't focus on it. You can

only focus on what you can control.

Since drops in the stock market are natural and really completely unavoidable, you simply

have to say focused on what you can control with your own personal finances.

So remember why you're investing in the first place?

And that's to build wealth for long-term goals such as retirement.

I know watching the markets go on a roller coaster ride can

feel frightening, but taking extreme actions when your emotions are running high, like selling

investments right when their value drops, is actually

the opposite of what you are trying to achieve. What's happening in the short term only matters

if you need to liquidate your investments or live on a portion of them in the

short term.

And that's why you should never invest money that you might need to spend within the next, let's say five years.

So if you're like me and your retirement horizon is longer than five years, much longer

than five years, you want to make solid investments that are going to grow over the long term.

And typically that means staying invested in index funds, mutual funds that are balanced,

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