this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2025
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Finance-wise, have an emergency fund and well-diversified portfolio. This is not financial advice, and I'm not a professional, but this is what I'd do with retirement funds and personal stock accounts:
Emergency fund: if you already have this handled, then look at your investments. If you dont have an emergency fund, do everything you can to save up at least 3-6months of living expenses - ideally in a high-yield savings account to protect your money from inflation.
US stocks: Don't be over-exposed to US stocks, especially riskier ones. Historically, bonds and foreign stocks have been recommended to balance your portfolio, but many people have ignored that in recent years due to the dominance of US large-cap stocks, especially the tech sector. Ensure you're diversified in accordance with your risk tolerance/retirement time-horizon.
Non-US Stocks: It would be good to have a non-US ETF or index fund with developing and emerging markets. It may not perform as well, but can potentially hedge against US market volatility. The counterpoint here is that US stocks are globally interconnected enough that getting non-US stocks would overexpose you to that part of the market. Caveat emptor, do research.
Bonds: bond ETFs/funds, I-bonds (inflation protected securities, you can buy $10k per year), and automated bond ladders can give you steady returns. Remember buying bonds directly is fairly illiquid - your money will be stuck in the bond for the duration of the bond's term.
Cash: Inflation isn't crazy right now. Probably wouldn't be bad to have more cash than normal sitting in high-yield accounts (earning around 4% APY right now) since the market is likely to dip. Maybe consider liquidating some investments that are riskier than you'd like. I wouldn't really advocate trying to time the market, but also it doesn't seem like a bad time to be a little heavier on cash imo.
Check out Boglehead 3 fund portfolios and their variations. Imo it is time to be safe and boring. If you have a long time until retirement, don't panic - ride it out and consider rebalancing your portfolio to the standard, oft-recommended asset mixes. If your retirement timeline is short, make sure that you aren't over-exposed to risky investments like stocks.
If we're really going full warlord-rule society ("the worst"), names on a domestic account at some institution are worthless. Wax for the scraping. Bonds, bank accounts, stocks, all of it. Cash gets devalued by inflation. That leaves you with foreign accounts, goods, metals, crypto. #1 and #4, assuming you have electricity to access/move them.
Things won't get to that point, most likely. Things can get really bad and still recover. If it's an apocalyptic scenario, better invest in a stock of bullets and a bunker.