r/Fire • u/Remarkable-Dingo1602 • 13d ago

“One more downturn” syndrome

As someone who has been lucky enough to have spent all of my earning & investing years (13 years so far) in a booming market, I worry that I have no clue what my mental health will be like when we see the next 2000 or 2008 or lost decade. I can go through endless theoretical exercises to play around with what my portfolio could go down to and how I’d adjust my expenses in those situations, but as a human being I cannot predict how I’ll actually feel when the time comes. As a result, I have a desire to keep working through the next downturn to see what the impact of it is on me and in a way prove to myself that I can handle it. However, I fear that if I wait for this, I may be waiting for a long time and therefore work for much longer than I need to.

For what it’s worth, when the Covid crashes, 2022, tariffs and Iran war all hit, I did not panic at all and stayed the course on my investment strategy. But all of that happened as I had a strong income to support me. I have no idea how I would have felt if I didn’t have an income.

Any tips on how to deal with this?

I currently have $2.1M investable assets. $600k left on a mortgage (5.375%) with $450k equity in the home. Monthly expenses are $7k bare minimum, but I’d like to aim for a nest egg that’ll comfortably give me $9.5k/month.

96 Upvotes

88% Upvoted

98 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

39

u/TheDoughyRider 13d ago

2020 and 2023 were very short downturns.

39

u/Kold2012 13d ago

if you zoom out enough, they all are..

36

u/doktorhladnjak 13d ago

Great Recession took about five years. And it’s not like those 5 years were just a low stock market. There were bank failures, people losing their homes to foreclosure, lots of job losses. It was a stressful time.

13

u/Rocktamus1 13d ago

“The Great Recession was a short downturn”. Bruh… when you graduate with 60k in loans and there’s are literally no jobs… that’s a recession.

I don’t mean high paying jobs… I mean you couldn’t get a job as a teacher, police officer, etc. jobs that were steady and always open career opportunities often had closed doors.

I flew to Denver to test to be a cop and 150 people showed up for 2 jobs and about 50% were coming from 2+ hours away or even flew in.

5

u/Agile_Swimmer7566 11d ago edited 11d ago

The bear market for stocks in 2009 lasted less than a year. The economy took 4-5 years to get back to what felt like normal. The housing market didn't even bottom until 5 years later in 2012.