If you lose a job, you just lose the income stream and 2 weeks of salary at most (+ whatever time it takes to find a new job). With an investment there's a risk

If you lose a job, you just lose the income stream and 2 weeks of salary at most (+ whatever time it takes to find a new job). With an investment there's a risk of losing the asset entirely. Rental property gets buried in a landslide, company goes bankrupt, gold gets stolen etc. There's also the risk of not making any return at all: rental property remains vacant, company barely breaks even, gold only tracks inflation etc. > investment in bonds backed by the US government. Those bonds have a correspondingly low yield, to reflect their low risk.