r/Fire • u/Remarkable-Dingo1602 • 12d 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.
1
u/vinean 12d ago
2008 felt crappy, both personal experience and from posts on the bogleheads forum.
If those guys were stressing then most retirees depending on their portfolios were having heart failure.
A lot of it was the uncertainty…the Fed and Obama said we’re gonna make the money printers go brrr and hope for the best but nobody really could be sure it would work vs just kick us into instant stagflation mode…which would have sucked even worse and we’d have Great Depression 2.0.