Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: How can I prepare for hard economic times?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 341 posts

Re: Ask HN: How can I prepare for hard economic times?

#31

Post by xupybd »

blfr wrote: post #18
xupybd wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, we don't have any non mortgage debt. Our mortgage is relatively low compared to most. I'm not looking to invest, I just want to make sure I provide food and shelter for my wife and child. Good idea to have a plan to rapidly reduce spending. I think I'll see what I can cut now. There are things I host that can be cancelled. No more VPS to host a personal email server I hardly use.

Not to encourage you to waste money, and there's definitely benefit in reducing clutter, but saving $4/mo on a VPS is unlikely to make a significant difference.

You're right but if I can find 20 similar costs to cut out I can start to make a difference.

Re: Ask HN: How can I prepare for hard economic times?

#32

Post by filipemcg »

edent wrote: post #20

Depends on where you are in the world. In the UK, there's this handy flowchart https://ukpersonal.finance/flowchart/ The essence is to have a budget. Understand exactly how much you spend and where you spend it. Once that's done, you can work out where (if anywhere) you can save money. It might be as simple as cutting out Netflix, or as complicated as refinancing all your debt.

Hi, that's a nice flow chart. Just one thing that I don't understand: Step 1. Make minimum payments on all debts. What does it mean? Isn't it better to pay all debts as fast as possible?

Re: Ask HN: How can I prepare for hard economic times?

#33

Post by usednet »

wanderingmind wrote: post #28
maratyv wrote: post #11

Diversify you risks. As much as you can: ETFs, property, rents, commodities, crypto, private funds, currencies.

Genuine question. How does retail investor invest in commodities which are all future contracts?

Commodity ETFs

Re: Ask HN: How can I prepare for hard economic times?

#35

Post by version_five »

How employable (or otherwise earning capable) are you? If 10% of people lost their jobs, that would be a big recession. Would you be one of them, and if you were, would you have trouble funding another job that pays as well? It depends on your industry, current job, experience, network, personality, etc. If you're a philosophy professor, it may be tough to get the same job. If you're in a non-faddish in-demand area of software, with lots of industry connections, you can probably keep a good job regardless of recession. You need to be honest about this with yourself.

Re: Ask HN: How can I prepare for hard economic times?

#36

Post by jwarden »

mckirk wrote: post #10
usednet wrote: post #3

If you think its coming, move your money to hedges. But people have been predicting the next big crash for the last 5 years to no avail, so don’t be surprised if you miss out on major gains.

Really? Everything points to 'economy is fucked for the foreseeable future', people are worrying about possible food and energy shortages, and your take is 'don't forget your FOMO though, stonks still go up'?

That’s not what GP is saying. They are not saying you shouldn’t take steps to diversify and reduce risk. But conventional wisdom is that you can’t time the market, so you shouldn’t necessarily expect to beat the market by selling now and buying back in later when the war is over.

Re: Ask HN: How can I prepare for hard economic times?

#38

Post by hgomersall »

We spent quite a bit of time thinking about mortgage repayments recently, and the overwhelmingly conclusion was to optimise for minimising short term repayments. The rationale was that with a young family our expenses are fairly high whilst our income is likely to increase in future.

The consequence of this is to prioritise a long mortgage over total repayments and to not necessarily pay off as much as possible, even keeping money back for day to day spending, assuming that's budgeted properly. Obviously there is a trade off; the smaller you can get your mortgage the more flexibility you have around adjusting repayments to help with living costs.

The long term view of inflation also suggests it might be better to hold more debt to ease things now. Though obviously that depends on how your wages might change in the longer run.

Re: Ask HN: How can I prepare for hard economic times?

#39

Post by ploika »

How secure is your job/industry? Not every sector will be hit equally.

Now might not be the best time to work in a startup that sells discretionary goods/services.

If you've got a solid job in an industry not too vulnerable to supply chain shocks or high interest rates you should weather the next downturn, as long as your expenditure is under control.

Re: Ask HN: How can I prepare for hard economic times?

#40

Post by eafkuor »

CyberRabbi wrote: post #12

If you have a stable job and a fixed mortgage you’ll be okay regardless of inflation. Inflation really only affects those who hold debt or hold cash. As public inflation numbers increase, make sure you are getting a commensurate increase in salary.

> As public inflation numbers increase, make sure you are getting a commensurate increase in salary.

Because that's easy to do for everyone?

Post reply on HN