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

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

Asked which investment they preferred for money that theywouldn’t need for at least a decade, 27 percent chose real estate.Another 23 percent said cash (one wonders how good their mattressis) 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 investmentoption. And interestingly, more men than women chose real estate;women opted for cash.

Millennials, now, they preferred cashas well, not trusting any particular form of investment, while theonly group that opted for stocks was that of households headed bycollege graduates.

Read: Investors turning toalternatives

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

So with all these long-term investment choices, does that mean that Americansare feeling better about their financial security? Nope. TheBankrate.com Financial Security Index dropped 2.3 percent fromJune’s index, to 102.1, its second lowest level for the year.Americans are feeling more worried about their job security—in June29 percent said they felt “more secure” about their jobs, while 9percent said they felt “less secure,” but in July only 22 percentsaid they felt “more secure” while 14 percent said they felt “lesssecure.”

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

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