As someone who works in the Investment Industry for the past 25+ years I can tell you one thing about investing DON'T ..unless you can consider it disposable income..Only people who should be investing are those with excess cash to do so...The downside to investing for the average person heavily outweights any possible future gains
Investing in individual stocks sure, but in general if you're looking at a 20+ year horizon, you stand to lose YEARS worth of savings if you don't invest in
something. Not only will you miss out on a huge amount of growth, but your savings will decline to less than half their original value because of inflation.
To back up my point, see the link below. In 70+ years, the S&P 500 index has
never had negative annual returns over a period of >20 years, including adjusting for inflation.
https://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2007/02/worst-returns-ever-for-s-500.htmlAlso, the worst case scenarios all span the Great Depression or recessions. They correspond to buying high right before a recession, and then selling low. If you're a more typical individual investor who's constantly putting in a bit of savings every year or every month you're going to do far better -- you'll buy at the top, but you'll also buy at the bottom (see: "dollar cost averaging").
Anyone with significant savings who doesn't plan to retire for 20+ more years would obviously be crazy not to at least buy some inflation protected securities/assets, and realistically would be crazy not to invest. I say this as a buy and hold investor whose portfolio decline in 2008 and again recently has been more than most people make in a year, but is totally okay with this knowing the markets will eventually return to their peaks, probably sooner rather than later. If you can save $5,000/year until retirement, the difference between investing and just keeping it in a low-interest savings account is literally the difference between retiring a millionaire and retiring with nothing.
The bottom line is that the economy and therefore the markets ultimately ends up reflecting the technological progress of our civilization (i.e. the economy is not a zero-sum game), and unless you believe that advancement is going to come to a complete halt, it's crazy not to invest in it.