How I’m Preparing Myself for a Possible Recession 🤔

Hello readers! I know it’s been over a month since my last post but I’ve been living a lot of life and fell off of my schedule. If you are new to the blog, welcome. If you have been here before, welcome back! It’s no secret that there is news of a likely recession in the United States and there are multiple tech companies that are laying off huge amounts of employees. During a time like this, it’s best to prepare yourself and your family for possible hard times in the future. I want to share with you all how I will be preparing myself for a recession that may be coming.

I’m Increasing My Emergency Fund

I’m a big fan of having an emergency fund which is a savings account that can cover your basic living experiences if an emergency happens such as losing your job, being very sick and unable to work, etc. Instead of only having $10,000 USD, I’ve decided to bump that up to about $15,000. As of now, I’m at $12,000 which can cover about 4 months of my current expenses. I normally don’t like to have too much money sitting in a savings account, even though it’s in a high interest savings account (high interest being over 1% interest in today’s world). It will give me more peace of mind since I have a child that will be entering daycare in one month and I’ll be closing on a home with my husband around the same time as well.

I am Being More Thoughtful of My Spending

If you have had any of my monthly budget break downs, you can see that sometimes my spending can get a little out of hand with general merchandise and Amazon purchases. For the past 2-3 years, I’ve build systems that allow me to not have to be so strict about my daily purchases. Also, I make enough money in a Tech job that allows me to live a good quality of life on my salary while splitting expenses with my husband. I’m all about saving and investing for the future while enjoying life (responsibly) in the moment as well. However, now that I am seeing news of layoffs everyday when I log into LinkedIn, I’ve let items sit within my cart much longer. I’ve taken more time to purchase anything, unless it’s food or something that my daughter needs. I have everything that I need in terms of clothes, shoes, technology, and simple comforts. So I don’t technically need anything at all. So, although there are a few items that I’d love to buy, I’m making myself wait weeks instead of days to think about it even more before buying those items.

I’m Still Investing in the Market

It might sound odd to be investing when the market is going down and people’s stock portfolios have lost value. However, I am planning to retire in 13-15 years so I have continued to invest into the stock market as I normally would. I invest approximately $313 per month in a Roth 401k account with my employer and about $1,000 in Vanguard in a brokerage account. I see it as the market being “on sale” right now and want to continue investing each month since I will have more than 10 years before I plan on using the money.

In conclusion….

Do you think that a recession is on the horizon? If so, how are you preparing for it? I’d love to hear from you in the comments section below.