Smart money moves to make in a volatile economy
With a volatile stock market and recession fears, these financial tips can help you stay in control and avoid costly mistakes.
With a volatile stock market and recession fears, these financial tips can help you stay in control and avoid costly mistakes.
With a volatile stock market and recession fears, these financial tips can help you stay in control and avoid costly mistakes.
With a volatile stock market, and concerns about consumer prices, a lot of us are feeling anxious about our money.
Jessica Roy, a personal finance journalist with our Hearst partners at the San Francisco Chronicle, says this is a good opportunity for people to be more in control, or at least more aware, of their financial situations. When it comes to your investments, the experts she's spoken with agree, it's important to stay the course and play the long game.
"Don't touch your investments. Whatever investment plan you had before the stock market went crazy, just keep doing that," says Roy.
That advice isn't just for young people who have longer to wait until retirement 鈥� it also applies to retirees.
"Most people as they approach retirement, they convert from mostly in the market to a mix of bonds and equity in the stock market, and money in a high-yield savings account," says Roy. "Right now, touch your depreciated stock market equity as little as possible. If you can pull from your bonds, if you can pull from your cash savings, now's the time to do it."
Roy says the biggest mistake people can make is converting all of their 401(k) to cash, or even worse, pulling it all out of their account.
"We've seen the stock market goes in cycles," says Roy. "Anybody who pulled their money out during the 2008 recession, during COVID, any of those times 鈥� those people all lost money."
To ease uncertainty, Roy says it's important to focus on the things you can control, like cutting unnecessary expenses, separating wants from needs, and resisting the urge to panic-buy.
"If you know your major appliance or automobile is going to be dead in the next 6 months, like an imminent and certain death, it's probably better to buy it now," says Roy. "But I think the smartest thing you can do right now is avoid making major purchases."
Building your emergency fund is an additional way to strengthen financial security. One strategy is to use direct deposit to set up a portion of your paycheck to go directly into your savings account. Every bit counts, and starting small can make a big difference over time.