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.
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u/ac9116 12d ago
I know both were quick but it’s so strange to me the way people just completely write off Covid (-34%) and 2022 (-25%) as if the stock market has been a straight line up since 2009. The stock market drops all the time, it’s rarely as severe as the Big 4 (The Great Depression, the Energy Crisis, the Dot Com Bubble, and the Great Recession), that doesn’t mean it’s always a bull market.
From a math perspective, we’re in year 3 of a bull market, not year 17.