Get over it. Move ahead.

That's the tough-love prescription for investors debilitated by the economic and financial downturn. Yesterday's gone, so deal realistically with the world before you.

As you begin to rebuild your savings and investments, take a deep breath and revisit the value of every holding that you own. Too many Americans are still stuck in avoidance mode.

"Folks won't even look at their investment statements because they're so worried and upset about the market, and that is a mistake," says Marilyn Capelli Dimitroff, a certified financial planner and president of Capelli Financial Services Inc., in Bloomfield Hills, Mich. "Stop thinking about history and where your investments were a year ago, because what you have now is what you have."

Although you can assume investment values will revive at some point, your projections for the future should consider current figures. In particular, go over 401(k) and other retirement accounts to see how your retirement prospects look.

Determine how much you need to save and invest regularly to get your overall assets back on track. Deferred spending is still the major component in wealth-building.

"Decide if your pool of assets is still enough, and if not, take action either by doing more saving and investing, or by cutting your spending," Capelli Dimitroff says. "With U.S. equity markets down more than 30 percent, you have to ask yourself if you could sustain another loss like that, because, if not, it is time to start ratcheting down equity exposure by selling some stocks."

For the fixed-income component of your portfolio, she recommends Treasury inflation-protected securities, known as TIPS, whose returns are indexed to compensate bondholders for inflation. And brave investors should at least consider some discount-priced stocks.

"There's less risk in the stock market now than when the Dow Jones industrial average was at 14,000 and everybody loved it," says Capelli Dimitroff, who recommends a portfolio diversified among U.S. and foreign stocks, large- and small-cap stocks, and growth and value styles in order to reduce risk. "The price-earnings ratios of stocks are more in line, expectations are low and valuations are low."

More than ever, you need a budget you can follow and a regular plan to put your money to work.

"Handling this market is akin to trying to lose weight, because to lose a pound you must burn more calories than you take in," says Paul Larson, editor of the Morningstar StockInvestor newsletter in Chicago. "Similarly, you must save more money than you spend."

A bigger blunder than avoiding investments is panicking and dumping everything you own. Although money-market funds and bank certificates of deposit provide a safe underpinning for your portfolio, their low returns mean you'll eventually need the longer-term inflation hedge that stocks historically have provided.

"Resist the urge to sell everything that dropped in value, for this market isn't going to persist forever," Larson says. "Yet if you do have too much in equities, this would be a good time to lighten up, because you will need balance and diversification."

If you're mentally and emotionally up for stock investing, Larson sees potential in health-care stocks, especially if the market downturn is prolonged and favors reliable industries. Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) and Novartis AG (NVS) are solid companies with good balance sheets, cash flow, industry positioning, and discounted stocks, he says.

Consumer staple stocks also should hold up relatively well versus the rest of the market, Larson predicts, with Coca-Cola Co. (KO), PepsiCo Inc. (PEP), and Diageo PLC (DEO) his favorites.

"If any investor has a low tolerance for risk, the financial space—primarily bank stocks—is still an area with enormous risk but also the most potential going forward," Larson says. "If I was placing money on a stock I thought would triple in the next year it would be a bank stock, but if I was choosing one that could potentially fall to zero, it would also be a bank stock."

Jack Bowers, editor of the independent Fidelity Monitor newsletter (www.fidelitymonitor.com) in Rocklin, Calif., advises conservative investors to move into high-yield corporate bond funds now so "you get paid while you wait" for the market to revive. Revival of stocks may take a while, but he does see improvement.

"We've seen a sense of relief when companies announce earnings only down by one-third from last year, since that's not so bad in this environment," Bowers says. "It also suggests that market valuations are getting in line with reality."

So much has to be decided in Washington and on Wall Street, progress will be gradual, experts say. Bowers expects a three- to five-year recovery period for stocks without significant progress for another year. The "fear factor" has caused all bank stocks to get clobbered, and he would avoid the stocks of autos and big banks, though he sees deals in smaller banks.

He concurs with Larson's confidence in a comeback by consumers.

"The place to play right now is probably consumer stocks because they'll benefit from the stimulus package and were the first ones to languish a long time ago when housing prices started going down," Bowers says. "Consumer stocks aren't dropping as much on the down days, and they're rising more on the up days."

So move ahead. Don't look back.