Originally published at: https://www.ohmydollar.com/2019/09/15/a-recession-is-coming-how-can-you-be-ready/
We talk about:
- What a recession technically is – and wtf the federal reserve is
- What things are better during a recession
- How to hide out from a recession (cough *grad school* cough)
- What debt to worry about during a recession, and what debt doesn’t matter much
- How to prepare to have to possibly look for job with a “work log”
- What recession-proof jobs and industries are
- What not to do with your portfolio during a recession
We love hearing from you!
Email us your financial worries or cat pictures or your college finance stories at questions@ohmydollar.com or tweet us at @anomalily or @ohmydollar
You can always find me on the Oh My Dollar! forums, a friendly, nonjudgemental online community about money. Don’t be afraid, come join us on the forums!
A Cat’s Guide To Money – Oh My Dollar! cat-filled purrsonal finance book, is shipping now. You can order a copy now if you missed the kickstarter! (Plus new stickers and a planner!)
This show is made paw-sible by listeners like you
We absolutely love our Purrsonal Finance Society Members, the folks that generously support Oh My Dollar with $1 or more a month on Patreon – and have made is so we have free, full transcripts for every show.
This episode was underwritten by patron Tamsen G Association, Chris Giddings, and Warrior Queen. To learn more about being part of the Purrsonal Finance Society and get cool perks like cat stickers, you can visit ohmydollar.com/support
Other Episodes You Might Find interesting
Transcript (provided by our listener supporters on Patreon)
Will Romey: [00:00:02] Listeners like you make this show possible and keep our lights on. You can join up with other Oh My Dollar! community members to support episode transcripts and more by making a pledge of a buck or more per month and get cool perks like cat stickers, a special badge on our forums. This episode was underwritten by the Tamsen G. Association, Warrior Queen, Chris Giddings. To learn more you can visit ohmydollar.com/support
Lillian Karabaic: [00:00:25] Welcome to Oh My Dollar! a personal finance show with a dash of glitter. Dealing with money can be scary and stressful. Here, we give practical, friendly advice about money that helps you tackle the financial overwhelm.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:00:35] I’m your host Lillian Karabaic.
Will Romey: [00:00:35] I’m your other host, Will.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:00:37] All right.
Will Romey: [00:00:39] Welcome back, Lillian.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:00:39] Oh, thank you. This is the first episode we’re recording since I have gotten back from the UK, which you may not have known because I was secretly in the UK all month – but I didn’t maybe even mention it.
Will Romey: [00:00:50] Our release schedule may not have given it away.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:00:54] Let’s just say it was seamless. But folks may have heard the whispers? I don’t know. Have you heard these whispers?
Lillian Karabaic: [00:01:00] A recession is coming.
Will Romey: [00:01:01] I’ve heard. I’ve heard the whispers. Yes. Even low voices- a little over a whisper.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:01:07] Here’s the thing. We don’t know really when the recession is coming, and we don’t know exactly what it looks like, which industries will be hit hardest.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:01:15] A recession is definitely coming, but a recession is always coming. It’s part of the cycle of economic activity – expansions, which is what we have been in.
Will Romey: [00:01:25] We just, you know, which would be like our economic growth period.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:01:28] Yeah, exactly.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:01:29] Are always followed by contractions, which contractions are a economic slowdown. On and on. All the recession technically is is when economic activity, as measured by the gross domestic product or GDP, slows down for at least two quarters. It doesn’t really sound so bad.
Will Romey: [00:01:45] That’s the technical term that orders GDP slows down and then GDP growth slows down, not GDP goes down-
Lillian Karabaic: [00:01:52] Yeah, it doesn’t go negative because if the GDP has gone negative, we’re at apocalypse status, pretty much. And it’s not necessarily bad.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:02:01] There’s there’s pros and cons to recessions and contractions. And if the economy was always expanding, we would have other problems. One of the big downsides of an expansion, like we’ve been in is that interest rates tend to go high, when the economy is doing well and we tend to have more inflation when interest rates are high, our currency inflates.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:02:24] So it gets more and more expensive to buy the things that you expect, which is one of the things we’ve been experiencing in because we’ve had the longest run coming out of the last recession of a economic expansion that we’ve had in a really long time.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:02:39] So, actually the stock market has been doing really well for one of the longest stretches that it has. So we knew this was coming, right? It’s just that now the whispers are really starting, and I think the whispers are starting right now simply because, 1, statistically we’re at the point where we’re going to have to have a contraction sometime soon.
Will Romey: [00:02:57] Just just as an economic inevitability.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:02:59] Yes. Another reason that there’s whispers starting – is that the Fed, which is the people in control of the money – they also set interest rates. And generally interest rates are kind of one of these bellwethers, that we use as an indicator for how things are doing overall.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:03:17] And, this is the first time that they have chosen to not raise the interest rate in quite a while. Just I think they just was a month ago, maybe two months ago.
Will Romey: [00:03:26] Jerome Powell, right,
Lillian Karabaic: [00:03:28] Is the current chair? Yeah, that sounds right. So the Fed is supposed to be a independent institution.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:03:34] It’s just essentially a bunch of economists and they set interest rates, but that those interest rates affect the rest of the market, because essentially when interest rates are high, that means inflation is really high and the Fed.
Will Romey: [00:03:47] So it’s both an indicator and influencer.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:03:51] Yeah, it’s you know, it’s econ. So you can always argue one way or the other that things are things are influencing things. It’s all just magic wand waving with numbers. Right?
Lillian Karabaic: [00:03:59] But I think one of the things that’s really hard is that if you say recession these days, we all think back to the Great Recession in all caps, which is like the -.
Will Romey: [00:04:09] Circa 2008.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:04:10] Yeah. Given by economic historians, which was like 2007. And it technically lasted almost till 2011. And this is you know, for me, I think back to almost every house on my block was in some sort of state of foreclosure or pre-foreclosure. I was replaced by someone holding a PHD for an eight hundred dollar a month AmeriCorps position when I left my position.
Will Romey: [00:04:33] Oww.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:04:35] My friends that had former high-flying jobs couldn’t get a callback for barista jobs because no one was hiring. Like I – you know, we saw people lose their retirement savings in the last recession and there was just such – The great recession scarred it scarred our whole frickin generation.
Will Romey: [00:04:52] So I feel like I was less aware of it because I was in college specifically 2008 through 2012, which was like – In a lot of ways, I think a huge insulating bubble.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:05:02] Well, I am one of the reasons I chose to go, so I went to college in my mid 20s. One of the reasons I chose to go back to college. Was that the writing was on the wall with the recession.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:05:12] We’d started seeing the recession and fun fact- Higher education is actually what’s considered a counter cyclical industry. And that’s because a lot of people choose to go back to school to either retrain when they lose their jobs or, you know, make a move for jobs – or just simply, hide out from the real world during at a recession.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:05:32] It’s a great way to live on student loans or grants for a couple years -.
Will Romey: [00:05:36] Yea that makes sensse –
Lillian Karabaic: [00:05:36] While you wait for the economy to recover.
Will Romey: [00:05:38] You’re not gonna get a job, might as well go to school.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:05:40] Right? You know, recessions can straight up suck if you’re not someone with a large amount of security net and financial resources. And I think I think it’s easy to be like, oh, recessions are just a normal part of the economic cycle. Everything’s fine. But like, sure, they suck a little for rich people. But if you’re rich, you usually just lay some workers off.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:05:58] Use this as an opportunity to get cheap lending, so you get low interest rates and use that opportunity to build a new factory or whatever. And you buy stocks when they’re –
Will Romey: [00:06:06] Weather the slowdown to relax and your beach house.
[00:06:08] Yeah. – On sale. I like how we feel like we’ve created this very rich person.
Will Romey: [00:06:11] He’s a straw man. With his suit.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:06:17] And then again, most things in the world suck a lot less for people who are rich.
Will Romey: [00:06:22] This is true.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:06:23] So this is like one of those things where, it’s it’s easy to both write off the recession and be like, oh, it’s a normal part of the economic cycle. But, at the same time, recessions freaking suck.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:06:34] If you’re not in a situation where you’re just laying off workers at your factory or, you know, making a new factory with low interest rates being led by the Fed.
Will Romey: [00:06:43] Making your own mai tais on the beach.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:06:45] And so there’s – right. *giggle* You you are the worker that got laid off. Right?
Lillian Karabaic: [00:06:50] And so there are some things you can do. I think one of the things here is to not get – It’s both important to not get too caught up in the anxiety of a recession is coming, because you just can’t predict the future.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:07:04] That being said, there’s a couple of things you can do to kind of be a little more recession-resistant in your finances. And I think they’re particularly notable, if you kind of hear the whispers coming for the recession.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:07:17] And if you generally feel like your job is eminently likely to hurt in a recession. So – the harder it will be for you to replace your current job. One thing is, if you work in a field like tourism or retail, it will likely be hit by recession. They’re generally considered the bellwethers of economic contractions because as soon as people’s pocketbooks get hurt, they stop going on vacations, they shop a little less. And you might very well be in a situation, where you kind of know that it’s likely that you’ll be eliminated earlier.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:07:48] Or if you’ve been in a situation where you’ve been like you’ve been hired on and you’ve been like a, you know, on temp contracts for a really long time.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:07:58] And as long as money keeps flowing and you keep getting, you know, your contract extended. But you know, the second there isn’t money, it’s going to run dry
Will Romey: [00:08:05] Right – yea.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:08:05] If you work in a counter cyclical industry like higher education, as we mentioned, funnily enough, personal finance advice is a counter-cyclical industry
Will Romey: [00:08:14] That makes senses! Oh, no! I don’t any money – I need to ask questions.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:08:16] People have more time to listen to personal finance radio shows during a recession.
Will Romey: [00:08:20] And booze. You were saying earlier on –
Lillian Karabaic: [00:08:22] Yeah, alcohol is considered a countercyclical countercyclical industry.
Will Romey: [00:08:27] I’m sad cuz I don’t have any money.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:08:28] Yeah.
Will Romey: [00:08:30] Glug glug.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:08:30] You know, you get free time if you’re unemployed. So those are those are things. And, you know, this is just generally knowing what field that you’re in and how it kind of fares generally during recessions.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:08:43] Then again, a lot of people worked in what they considered to be very secure financial jobs, that suddenly were massively cut during the last recession because of all the upheaval in finances.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:08:56] So there’s not a perfect predictor. That being said, the harder you think it’s likely to replace your current job, the longer it would take you to get hired – So if you’re a certified nuclear reactor operator and everyone in your town works for the reactor, and if the reactor closed down, everybody would have the same certification and be looking for the same job, so you’d likely move to another city.
Will Romey: [00:09:16] I never, ever thought about that.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:09:17] I mean, that’s one of the things is if you work in a highly specialized field, it usually takes you longer to get rehired. So what’s great is that you have, you know, sort of a more stable position and you’re you’re more covetable. The downside, is that if if your job gets cut, you’re likely to be competing against people with kind of similar qualifications. Generally, recession is actually also not the time to make a massive career shift. And that’s because you don’t want to be in a position of competing against people with more experience, as an entry level employee to a new industry, right?
Will Romey: [00:09:49] Presumably with other entry level employees.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:09:51] Right?
Will Romey: [00:09:52] For the same reasons.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:09:52] Right. So that is so generally what you want to do is find a way to like pivot. This is leads me into kind of the first thing you. Do to prepare. If you have a general awareness of how hard it’s going to be to replace yourself, find a new job, then you have a general idea of your emergency fund.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:10:10] We’ve talked before, ad nauseum, on the show about emergency funds, but they become even more important in a recession because that cushion can really help ease some of the transition. And so, you know, an eight month emergency fund will give you – you often you can ride through an entire recession on that emergency fund.
Will Romey: [00:10:29] That’s two quarters.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:10:30] Yeah, exactly. And if you are in the situation where you hold a lot of debt, student loans, a mortgage, credit card debt, you usually will need a bigger emergency fund than if you don’t have very many obligations.
Will Romey: [00:10:43] You keep on putting money towards those and at least not have them increase too much.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:10:46] Yeah, Right. So one thing to know is that federal student loans and medical debt can usually be put on income-based repayment if you lose your job or have like a large loss of income because you know how to deal with your job being cut down to four days a week or whatever.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:11:01] But credit cards, auto loans and usually mortgage lenders couldn’t care less if you’ve lost your income. So it’s important to think about what kind of debt you have when you’re kind of trying to calculate this out. There’s no magic perfect number for what the perfect emergency fund is. And obviously, it has to be within the reality of what you’re able to save.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:11:19] But just focusing on saving when you feel like a recession is coming, can be one of those things that makes a huge difference.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:11:27] And this factors into the next point, which is once again, actually knowing your expenses. So – bonus points are knowing what expenses you can cut. And if you haven’t gotten laid off yet and you don’t know what the recession are, there’s no reason you have to cut expenses right now if you’re doing OK and the recession hasn’t hit you personally.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:11:47] But if you do think you’re at risk of losing your job, or you’re just trying to find ways to build up savings, know what expenses you can trim. So I immediately know where where in my budget if things get hard- What things are going to get eliminated.
Will Romey: [00:11:59] Right. What? What nice bonus features you can cut.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:12:02] Yeah. Yeah. So maybe, you know, you’d cut back on a gym membership if your hours got cut at work or if you get your hair dyed professionally- Maybe you can either start doing it yourself or you could switch your monthly appointments to every six or eight weeks.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:12:14] Like those are the kind of things where you just knowing where you’re going to cut that – trim your budget from, I think is really helpful.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:12:24] So this is kind of a weird one, but make sure you show your work. So I generally advise what I call a “Work log”, which is it’s easy to be really proud of yourself in the moment at work, like, oh, I passed this initiative, blah, blah, blah.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:12:38] And then you sit down to do a resumé in two years and you cannot remember what you did at your job.
Will Romey: [00:12:43] “Entered data in spreadsheets”.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:12:44] Right. And so I’m a big fan of like just once a week writing down your accomplishments in just a very short bullet point. And then if you keep this in like a Google doc at work, I recommend keeping on Google doc- not on your work Google account.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:13:02] You know, then you’ll have stuff to pull from when or if you’re applying for other jobs. And this is a huge one. If you do creative work in your job and you’re going to need portfolio projects, like writing samples or even in the case of like I wasn’t in a creative position, but I was a fundraiser. So I often designed annual appeals. I wrote I wrote appeal letters, I wrote blast e-mails for work, keeping that stuff off your work account. So sending it to yourself. A lot of this for me was public material. So it’s not like – they are trade secrets. They literally got sent to thousands of households.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:13:38] But I would just be so relieved that I did them. I wouldn’t think like, oh, I should make sure to email this blast to myself.
Will Romey: [00:13:42] Have a copy for yourself for later.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:13:44] Yeah.
Will Romey: [00:13:44] Probably also a good time to steal industrial secrets.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:13:48] Well, and this is I mean, sure- Let’s. We’re not advising-.
Will Romey: [00:13:51] Don’t steal industrial secrets!
Lillian Karabaic: [00:13:53] But this is one of the other things for me, like as a fundraiser. I do a lot of creative work that, you know, was in the position of like there were immediate numbers I was tracking constantly, like how much do we raise from this e-mail? What was our click-through rate on the e-mail?
Lillian Karabaic: [00:14:08] That kind of stuff fades to the back of your head, almost immediately after you’ve done it right? You’ve lived through another winter campaign season. You’ve dealt with end of year fundraising and you just completely forget about it.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:14:19] This is particularly true if you work in a fast paced field like marketing or business analytics. But if you write that stuff down at the end of the week on your work log, that means you’re going to have a perfect example when you get stuck in an interview and they’re like ‘Tell me about a time that you improved a system’ and you’re like, ‘Oh, here’s -.
Will Romey: [00:14:36] Here’s a time.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:14:36] Here’s a time that I increased our automation by like 30 percent on our emails and, you know, raises much more money. And that’s exactly the kind of thing that you like fades in your memory over time. But if you just write it down in a short little work long.
Will Romey: [00:14:48] That sounds great on an interview and you’ve got the information there. And then clearly you know what you’re capable of and have done.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:14:54] Yeah, it makes writing resumes – which is very few people’s favorite task, a little easier, right?
Lillian Karabaic: [00:15:00] And then this is one of those ones that I think I hate saying it, but I to say it anyway. Consider a side hustle.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:15:07] So having multiple sources of income, particularly income, you’re more in control of. So entrepreneurship of some sort. Selling things on Etsy. Dog walking, that kind of stuff. Not working for another employer necessarily.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:15:18] It really makes you recession proof, right? So like during the recession, I didn’t have any single full-time job. I had three to five other jobs. But that meant at any given time. If one of them- if work dried up for a little while, if they had to cut my hours or whatever, it didn’t it didn’t have as big of a hit on my income like losing a whole job would have been.
Will Romey: [00:15:39] And that’s always why I’ve liked multiple jobs. I’ve had a few times where I’ve just, you know, unexpectedly lost my my only job. And that has such a greater impact on you when you don’t have other things going on.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:15:48] Yeah, exactly. And here is one of the things about like, you know, as much as I bemoan how much being self-employed is stressful and things like that. One of the great things about being self-employed, is that you’re more used to that variable income. And so you tend to get a little less stressed out by the like – folks that have only ever had one job for an employer.
Will Romey: [00:16:09] Yeah, we know how much they’re getting each month.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:16:12] Yeah, the recessions are harder on them. I’m in the situation where like getting myself 20 more customers in a month can make a huge difference on my bottom line on what I take home. And that’s the kind of thing that I know what inputs I need to do to do that right – versus like a raise, which is like you’ve gotta go talk to a boss. Maybe the boss doesn’t approve. It’s a recession.
Will Romey: [00:16:33] Maybe it’ll happen in a few months.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:16:33] You’re happy to have a job. Yeah. Yeah. None of that. None of that is. I just need to write a better email to sell things or like buy some Instagram ads or whatever. So another thing is to take advantage of any benefits you have through work. So you have one of those cushy jobs.
Will Romey: [00:16:49] If you’re 25 and a month ago off your parents health insurance stuff – definitely the most doctors appointments I’ve ever made in a year. It’s just like I’m about to be off mom’s insurance – Let’s go!
Lillian Karabaic: [00:16:58] Do it.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:16:58] So obviously, medical, dental, optometry or some of the obvious benefits in a lot of people get you
Will Romey: [00:17:04] Oh – I have an optometry bonus point if you actually get your glasses prescription instead of just buying glasses. You can get your glasses for way cheaper elsewhere.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:17:14] Yes, that is one of that. Usually them.
Will Romey: [00:17:16] That’s something I have to ask for usually..
Lillian Karabaic: [00:17:18] Yep. And usually if you need to get this is a weird tip, but if you want to get glasses off line like are online and you want to go get like 6 dollar glasses on the internet, which I love. I’m a big fan of. Make sure you get your pupilary distance written down on your prescription because you will need that to buy them online. And that’s not standardly written on it, but they will have measured it for you.
Will Romey: [00:17:38] Noted.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:17:40] Fun thing to do. And that’s like I was in the position where I had a three month contract job last year. And the last three weeks of the job I had vision and dental, which was weird. And I went and got all my teeth cleaned.
Will Romey: [00:17:52] One by one.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:17:53] I got like a grind, a grind plate for my teeth because it was like good dental insurance-.
Will Romey: [00:17:58] And a grill. A Silver Grill.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:18:01] Yep..
Will Romey: [00:18:01] Y’all should see Lillian, it’s wild. it’s pretty great. Just dollar signs and cats.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:18:04] I got those tooth gems you can get.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:18:06] I also got I also went and got my eye- You know, I had vision insurance. It wasn’t that great. But I bought like a year’s supply of contacts.
Will Romey: [00:18:16] I never thought about that.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:18:18] That turned out to be very helpful considering that I then started figure skating and had to stop wearing my glasses all time.
Will Romey: [00:18:24] You spin quickly and they’d go flying across the ice
Lillian Karabaic: [00:18:27] . Yeah.
Will Romey: [00:18:27] – get ran over by a Zamboni.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:18:29] I have broken so many glasses. That’s why I got contacts in the first place, actually.
Will Romey: [00:18:34] That’s why I started buying cheap glasses. I have new glasses. But you didn’t notice the same as my old glasses.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:18:39] They look great. Yeah, I didn’t notice. OK. There’s other things you might get through work. So if you work like a corporate job, you may not even realize what you might have. What’s called an employee assistance program or EAP.
Will Romey: [00:18:51] EEP!
Lillian Karabaic: [00:18:51] And EAPs often have a couple of things. One, they often give you access to like a therapist, so you often can get like a couple appointments with a therapist.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:19:01] You can sometimes get a will done for free through an EAP.
Will Romey: [00:19:04] interesting.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:19:06] Which is like it cost a couple hundred bucks to get a lawyer to help you do a will.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:19:08] So that’s a great thing to do while you have access to that. You also can often get discounts for things you only buy like once a year- like a discount on car insurance. I’m still living off the group employee discount at the gym that- I have like a large free gym membership and I got like the group discount.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:19:26] Sometimes you can get discounts to things like Costco memberships through your EAP.
Will Romey: [00:19:30] That sounds great.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:19:32] All sorts of bizarre things that you can get. So just check it out, make sure that you take advantage of that while you can. So like my gym membership, I obviously don’t work at that corporation anymore, but I still have that rate locked in.
Will Romey: [00:19:44] Right. They’ve never adjusted and –
Lillian Karabaic: [00:19:46] Yes.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:19:46] Well, are you still working there? Yeah. Yeah. So. Also, your job may very well start cutting things like paying for conferences or recertification. That’s often one of the first things to. Oh, so milk it while you can.
Will Romey: [00:20:01] Yeah, get it while the getting’s good.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:20:02] Especially if you think you might lose your job. But any you don’t want to have to pay for your, you know, G.I.S. recertification out of your own pocket. If you aren’t gonna have to. So do it now.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:20:14] Or like conferences. Maybe that would help you meet other people in the field. So you’re you’ve got doors to knock on if you are looking for another job or a side hustle. Also, you know, fill your pockets with all the free snacks.
Will Romey: [00:20:26] Oh, yeah.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:20:26] I’m kind of kidding, but I’m not really kidding. But I’m a little kidding.
Will Romey: [00:20:29] I mean, but there’s like –
Lillian Karabaic: [00:20:32] if you work in an office for free snacks. I’m so frickin jealous.
Will Romey: [00:20:35] Uh huh? I mean, my coffee habit is definitely supported by our coffee sponsors on XRAY as well as our coffee supplier at Sexy coffee – the side hustle.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:20:44] Sounds like sounds like someone that someone that writes the carts for the station and the ads for our underwriters.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:20:53] Yeah. I had a job with free coffee once. It was great. I’ve had like two jobs with free coffee and it’s been really great. Also, government offices usually have coffee, but I don’t know what it is about government employees and how bad the coffee is. It’s just universally bad. And all government offices I’ve ever been in.
Will Romey: [00:21:07] I’ve never worked for the government. I have no light to shed, But I’m curious. Yeah. Government workers. Tell us about your coffee habits. I’m curious – this would be a very niche spinoff podcast. Yeah, It’ll be interesting.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:21:21] I would actually love to hear how people deal with coffee at work – because there’s all sorts of different things. We’re gonna do a future episode on this.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:21:26] So write in and tell us how coffee is done at your workplace. Coffee and tea. Is it just provided by the company? Do you do a coffee fund? Do you have to join in the coffee fund no matter what? Even if you don’t drink coffee?
Lillian Karabaic: [00:21:38] I would love to hear. I’m really curious. There’s all sorts of different ways that it’s done in different companies. All right.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:21:45] Those are the big ones that I would mention. I think one of the things to know is what things are coming down the pipeline for your expenses.
Will Romey: [00:21:54] Yeah.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:21:54] So even if you feel relatively secure in your job and you’ve like shored up your savings and you’re feeling okay despite like wanting to take advantage of those benefits or work and buy things like that, if you’re thinking about replacing any like durable consumer goods, so your car or your washing machine, something like that, your laptop, even,.
Will Romey: [00:22:15] You want to know about that ahead of time?
Lillian Karabaic: [00:22:17] Yeah, well, but it’s often better to wait until the recession hits because generally those kind of things are more likely to be either – sold used. So you can get them, which is, by the way. Fun fact. When you buy something used, it’s not reflected in the gross domestic product.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:22:32] Interesting fact.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:22:33] But in addition to being able to get those things used, if you are going to finance something like that, like get a 0 percent, you know, interest loan or whatever. You’re more likely to have a lower interest rate, if you do it during the recession.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:22:47] And there’s also a lot of deals because it’s hard to sell durable material goods during a recession. So you tend to get a lot of discounts at, you know, RIP Sears. But, you know, places like that. So it’s a thing to think about it.
Will Romey: [00:23:01] So I guess it is the one on one of the potential slight benefits or times you would be wanting to spend money in a recession versus not in a recession.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:23:09] And I guess the last thing I should say is I hope you all have some sort of investments, your retirement account, whatever, and.
Will Romey: [00:23:17] Leave them alone.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:23:18] Just Leave them alone. Just leave him alone. You may be in the position where if you are not auto balancing- your whatever your retirement portfolio is.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:23:27] If the economy isn’t doing great. You may have to rebalance and, you know, buy a different proportion. Sell and buy stocks and bonds. Obviously right. But it’s hard. It’s hard for me, even?
Lillian Karabaic: [00:23:39] I logged into my vanguard and I was like, – you know, we had a we had a pretty big dip in the stock market a couple of weeks ago. I logged in and I was like, oh, I don’t like to see my IRA take a hit like that. Like, it was like a bummer to be like, oh, this is a first month in quite a while where I haven’t reported an increase to my net worth from my retirement portfolio.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:23:58] And like, that sucked to like enter the negative in the spreadsheet and feel like, but I didn’t do anything. I didn’t get anything from that.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:24:05] But I always remind myself that I am buying stocks on sale. And as much as I resent these rich people that are mostly shielded by the recession, but whine about it just as much.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:24:16] I try to embrace their attitude towards the stock market whenever possible and go. “hey, my goal is I’m in this for the long haul.” Panicking when it hits the bottom and taking all your money out, because you don’t like to see it drop.
Will Romey: [00:24:29] It’s the worst move.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:24:29] It is literally the worst move and I know it’s really tempting, but don’t do it.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:24:34] So I think – those are our main things.
Will Romey: [00:24:38] Yeah. All it took was a recession to get Lillian to talk about macroeconomics.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:24:45] *sings* I love talking about macro.
Will Romey: [00:24:48] Yeah. Tell us about your recessions.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:24:51] Yeah, I would. So I’d be really curious to hear if you lived through and were working durinig the last recession. Did you lose your job? Do you feel like you were in a recession kind of proof industry?
Lillian Karabaic: [00:25:01] Obviously, I’d love to hear about your coffee situation at work.
Will Romey: [00:25:04] Oh yea that too!
Lillian Karabaic: [00:25:05] There are two very important episode, but yeah, I’d like to hear. How did you prepare for the last recession? Did you weather it? Do you feel like you weathered it well? Do you feel like you’re more prepared this time?
Lillian Karabaic: [00:25:15] So it’s coming, but we don’t know when.
Will Romey: [00:25:18] So look out for that!
Lillian Karabaic: [00:25:20] Lookout for that. We’ll know when it’s here.
Will Romey: [00:25:23] Right. This is one of those things where we get we get signs before we’re there. But, you know, because you’re falling off the sign.
Will Romey: [00:25:31] Bellwethers. I had to look up the origin of bellwether because you used it twice. A bellwether is the lead sheep with a bell on it.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:25:39] I did not actually know that.
Will Romey: [00:25:40] Glad I looked at it.
Will Romey: [00:25:43] So with that, that wraps up for today. We love hearing from you. So e-mail us all those things we asked you for at questions@ohmydollar.com or tweet us @anomalily or @ohmydollar.
Lillian Karabaic: [00:25:54] Our producer is Will Romey. Our intro music is by Aaron Parecki. And your host and personal finance educator is me, Lillian Karabaic. Thanks for listening, Until next time, remember to manage your money so it doesn’t manage you.
I haven’t experienced any other recession as an adult besides the Great Recession, and I am absolutely nervous about the next one. I’ve never experienced a normal recession, and so I have no idea what they’re like.