Have you forgotten the “object” of investing?
Many people forget that the sole object of investing is the allocation of current money to provide funds for future consumption.
As such, it might be helpful to think in terms of separate “buckets” or “pools” of money for each future need. For example, you might have one bucket for emergency use needs - say a 4 to 6 month pool of money in the event of a job loss, another bucket for higher education needs, and one more for retirement needs. Maybe there’s a bucket set aside for your dream home on the beach!
The point is is that each of these future needs has a different expected time horizon of when the money will be called upon for use. All should be considered separate buckets when determining suitability for a particular investment.