When was the last time that you saw a news headline that read, “Young professional spends less than they earn, consistently invests the difference into a low-cost, diversified portfolio for 25 years and retires at their lakeside cottage”? Probably never.

Now, that would be a long headline, and not very catchy. And you may notice it sounds a bit boring. Maybe not the lakeside cottage part. But the investing that led up to it. And that’s because successful investing is pretty boring.

Now think about most financial news. It’s exciting. There are heroes, villains, money and power. The excitement is what gets you to click, share and come back to the page. Unfortunately, that same excitement can lead you astray when it comes to making financial decisions.

Here are a few things to remember about financial news to help you stay on the right path:

1. Financial news is designed to grab your attention—not grow your wealth

It’s tempting to think of financial news as a source of information when it comes to your finances. But it’s often closer to a source of entertainment.

We did a survey of the investing section headlines used by a popular news outlet. We ran into words like jolt, hit, pummeled, soars, striking out, famous, rock bottom, too much, too fast, high hopes, huge boost, huge risk, disaster, shock, trouble and high stakes.

If your blood pressure rose just reading that, you’re not alone. These headlines are designed to arouse emotion and draw your attention. They pull you into the present and the short-term, when building wealth is more about focusing on the future and the long-term.

2. Predictions and forecasts can be inaccurate

A lot of financial news is made up of forecasts or predictions about the future: where the stock market will be next month or next year, how long a market downturn will last, or warnings of impending doom from analysts who were right about doom’s arrival once ten years ago.

Humans are programmed to dislike uncertainty, especially when it comes to things like our life savings. That often makes us easy targets for the kinds of stories that promise to resolve that uncertainty.

But the market is complex. It represents the wisdom, greed and fear of millions of market participants—and all of these participants are unique. They have different strategies, goals, timelines and levels of experience, which is why the market’s short-term moves are almost impossible to predict.

If you read news from months or years ago, you’ll see that many events didn’t play out as predicted, the impending doom almost never came to pass and what was identified as important at the time has largely been forgotten.

3. News that tells you exactly what to do may not be helpful for your situation

There are many great financial writers working for news outlets and offering sound advice. Part of what makes these writers great is that they rarely tell you exactly what to do. Instead, they lay out helpful information and give guidelines on how to think about that information in light of your own situation. These are the writers you want to pay attention to.

It is even more important to pay attention to your own goals, timeline and values. As we’ve written before, an investing journal can be a handy place to record your goals and values while you work to filter the news that’s relevant to you.

What to do?

For long-term investors, it may be wise to ignore some kinds of financial news completely. But while that may have been possible when all you had to do was avert your eyes from the newspapers in the grocery store, it gets a little harder when you’re targeted with headlines on social media.

These financial news headlines are most likely to intrude when there’s turbulence in the markets. That’s also when we’re most prone to panic and make unwise financial decisions with long-term consequences.

One remedy is to keep a list of trusty sources to consult for sound advice—those who encourage you to take a long-term perspective, who put current events in their historical context and who re-orient you towards your own investing preferences, timeline and goals.

RBC InvestEase believes in providing this kind of advice. You can find it in articles like “How to Pick the Best Robo-Advisor for You” or “Isn’t Investing Like Gambling?”, our Money Moves podcast, or by reaching out to one of our expert advisors.

One more thing…

The last thing to remember is that it’s actually a gift to be able to ignore most financial news and to not get stirred up by words like pummeled, disaster or jolt. Investing is one of the few areas of life in which less work (and less worry) will likely get you more pay.

If you’re not one of those people who finds financial news engaging, you’ve got additional time for the more exciting areas of your life. After all, it’s really your life—and not your investing—that should be exciting.