--- title: How Should I Invest My Retirement Money? description: 'There are three main investment categories, or "asset classes": stocks, bonds, and cash. Your retirement accounts should contain a mix of all of them.' authors: - name: timestaff url: https://money.com/author/timestaff/ articles: 459 covers: - Investing - Banking - Career Advice - Credit - Credit Cards - Housing - Identity Theft - Insurance - Lifestyle - Loans - Mortgages - Personal Finance - Professional Services - Retirement - Shopping - Taxes former_staff: true published: '2014-05-20T13:18:38.000Z' modified: '2024-04-02T04:37:18.000Z' section: Investing tags: - bonds - cash - investing for retirement - Retirement - retirement accounts - retirement investments - retirement planning - retirement savings - stocks canonical: https://money.com/collection-post/how-to-invest-retirement-money/ type: Article source: structured-blocks --- > **Disclosure:** We research all brands listed and may earn a fee from our partners. Research and financial considerations may influence how brands are displayed. Not all brands are included. [Learn more](https://money.com/page/disclaimer/). ![97658782](https://img.money.com/2014/05/140523_ultimateretiremt_investing.jpg) There are three main investment categories, or "asset classes": [stocks](https://money.com/collection-post/what-is-a-stock/), [bonds](https://money.com/what-is-a-bond/), and cash. Your retirement accounts should probably contain a mix of stocks and bonds and perhaps a small amount of cash, too. Some people also invest in "hard assets" like [real estate](https://money.com/collection-post/what-should-i-do-before-buying-a-home/) or [gold](https://money.com/gold-silver-invest/), but those are generally not well-suited for retirement accounts. **Stocks** are shares of ownership in a corporation. They have historically provided more long-term growth than bonds. But they’ve also been more volatile, so they can lose a lot of money in the short term. **Bonds** are basically interest-bearing loans you make to a company or government. They generally offer smaller long-term returns than stocks do, but also less short-term risk. **Cash**, or a "cash equivalent" like a money-market fund, is the least risky asset class, but it also offers the lowest return. You might not need any cash in your retirement account until you're approaching retirement age or in retirement. To build a nest egg large enough to fund your life in retirement, which could last 30 years or more, you'll need the growth that stocks provide. The catch is that stocks are generally more volatile than bonds, which means that a stock-heavy portfolio can give you some hair-raising moments (or years). So most people invest in a mix of stocks and bonds, enabling them to both capture some of the long-term growth of stocks and benefit from the relative stability of bonds during stock market downturns. ```json { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ { "@type": "BreadcrumbList", "@id": "https://money.com/collection-post/how-to-invest-retirement-money/#breadcrumb", "itemListElement": [ { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "name": "Home", "item": "https://money.com" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 2, "name": "Investing", "item": "https://money.com/investing/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 3, "name": "Portfolio Management", "item": "https://money.com/portfolio-management/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 4, "name": "How Should I Invest My Retirement Money?" } ] }, { "@type": "WebSite", "@id": "https://money.com/#website", "url": "https://money.com", "name": "Money", "publisher": { "@id": "https://money.com/#organization" } }, { "@type": "WebPage", "@id": "https://money.com/collection-post/how-to-invest-retirement-money/#webpage", "url": "https://money.com/collection-post/how-to-invest-retirement-money/", "name": "How Should I Invest My Retirement Money?", "isPartOf": { "@id": "https://money.com/#website" }, "datePublished": "2014-05-20T13:18:38.000Z", "mainEntity": { "@id": "https://money.com/collection-post/how-to-invest-retirement-money/" }, "inLanguage": "en-US", "breadcrumb": { "@id": "https://money.com/collection-post/how-to-invest-retirement-money/#breadcrumb" }, "dateModified": "2024-04-02T04:37:18.000Z" }, { "@type": "Article", "headline": "How Should I Invest My Retirement Money?", "articleSection": "Investing", "image": [ { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://img.money.com/2014/05/140523_ultimateretiremt_investing.jpg", "width": 1200, "height": 901, "caption": "140523_ULTIMATERETIRE_INVESTING" } ], "author": [ { "@type": "Person", "name": "timestaff", "url": "https://money.com/author/timestaff/", "@id": "https://money.com/author/timestaff/#author" } ], "publisher": "https://money.com/#organization", "datePublished": "2014-05-20T13:18:38.000Z", "description": "There are three main investment categories, or \"asset classes\": stocks, bonds, and cash. 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