Have you been getting bad investment advice? If you, like the majority of people, have been approaching investing the traditional way, you probably have.

In fact, if you have been losing a lot of money in the stock market or if your nest egg isn't growing very fast at all, you may have been on the receiving end of very conventional -- and pretty darn bad -- advice. Read on to find out why -- and what you can do about it.

You see, the traditional party line is all about playing it safe. Now I'm not at all opposed to keeping your money safe. But the problem with the traditional approach is that the safety of your money is actually an illusion. You're giving up potential profits for the sake of keeping your money safe -- yet the money isn't as safe as your advisors would have you believe.

Most people are taught to invest for the long term, usually investing with stocks, bonds or real estate using a “buy and hold” scheme. Unfortunately, this advice has rarely worked in the past and is even less likely to work in the future. The real truth looks a bit different.

Here's why...

The concept of passively investing is that you can create wealth without work, resulting in “investors” never doing their homework. Of course, there are consequences for that -- they're receiving commensurate performance results.

At best passive investing may help preserve your wealth more efficiently than putting it in a bank account, but in 30+ years of experience, the only people I’ve met that have made money in the markets have been those who were actively managing their investments. And most of them have been money managers who treated investing like any other business.

So what are you going to do about it? If you continue the buy and hold approach, your money may grow a little, but you'll lose much of that growth to inflation, and quite possibly another portion of it to plan administration fees.

What are your alternatives? You could educate yourself about how to invest successfully -- and if you have the time and money to do so, that's an excellent approach.

However, most people have neither the time nor the money -- nor the inclination -- to learn enough about investing to actually make a success out of it. In that case you might want to consider working with an experienced financial advisor instead.

When you do that, be sure to ask them about their investment philosophy and their performance records. If they're recommending more of the same, you might as well stay where you are. But if they have experience with alternative investment products that have traditionally outperformed the stock market, at least over time, you should take a good hard look at what they might be able to do for you.

After all, the whole idea about investing is to have your money go to work for you. Don't let it just sit there. Especially not when your buy and hold strategy is costing you big-time.

Ready to gain access to those alternative investments that can yield a much higher return with excellent safety?

They're especially powerful inside Roth accounts, which high income earners can finally take advantage of in 2010.