Scott Burns says:
The purchasing power of our money is declining about 2% a year.
If
you have been invested in a simple, traditional balanced fund that was a
60/40 mixture of stocks and bonds— such as the Vanguard Balanced Index
fund that I mention regularly— your investment would have nearly doubled
over the last 5 years. The recent 5-year annualized return was 13.23
percent.
Read:
http://assetbuilder.com/scott_burns/having_your_savings_in_cash_isnt_a_plan
http://assetbuilder.com/blogs/scott_burns
http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/scottburns/