Millennials may not think so, but most Americans still hearken to Mark Twain’s old saw: “Buy land; they’re not making it any more.”

You can tell because real estate topped the list of preferred long-term investments in a new Bankrate.com study, conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International (PSRAI).

Asked which investment they preferred for money that they wouldn’t need for at least a decade, 27 percent chose real estate. Another 23 percent said cash (one wonders how good their mattress is) and just 17 percent opted for the stock market.

Those land-lovers predominate in the western part of the U.S., where land was chosen nearly twice as often as any other investment option. And interestingly, more men than women chose real estate; women opted for cash.

Millennials, now, they preferred cash as well, not trusting any particular form of investment, while the only group that opted for stocks was that of households headed by college graduates.

Read: Investors turning to alternatives

Goldbugs came in fourth, with 14 percent choosing gold and other precious metals as their preferred long-term investment. Just 5 percent of respondents in the study opted for bonds.

So with all these long-term investment choices, does that mean that Americans are feeling better about their financial security? Nope. The Bankrate.com Financial Security Index dropped 2.3 percent from June’s index, to 102.1, its second lowest level for the year. Americans are feeling more worried about their job security—in June 29 percent said they felt “more secure” about their jobs, while 9 percent said they felt “less secure,” but in July only 22 percent said they felt “more secure” while 14 percent said they felt “less secure.”

And they’re even gloomier than they were earlier in the year about the state of their savings, with 29 percent saying they felt “less comfortable” with their level of savings compared with what they’d socked away a year ago. Only 18 percent said they were “more comfortable.” And 21 percent are “less comfortable” with their level of debt than they were a year ago.

It should come as no surprise that women are more concerned than men about both the permanence of their jobs and the level of their savings.

Instant Insights /

Real estate tops list of long-term investments for Americans

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