So, you mention socialist Democrats but don’t mention the tax breaks that the 1% rich got? Isn’t that socialism, too? Giving people free money? That’s one reason we’ll be in recession. The other is having someone in office who seems to be trying to bankrupt the country or he doesn’t know what he’s doing. Recessions do come and go but this one has been forced. I knew where we were headed the moment he took office. You don’t get to have 5 bankruptcies, not pay people for work done and I think you can run a country.

There’s a ton of people here loads smarter than me and it kinda surprises me that many seem to be chalking it up to the fact that we’ve had a good long ride and it’s finally time. And the media is only reporting what they’re hearing which is that people are hurting, badly. When people are losing their lives, whether it’s farmers committing suicide or children in cages, this is bad.

Holy crap – y’all are killing it! Even saving for kids that aren’t around yet, haha… There’s a juicy blog post on its own – I hope you launch it! :) You def. have the street cred to be able to!!

We’re currently putting extra money a little more heavily toward mortgage pay-down and plan to shift the balance more toward buying stock when the market shifts down. We want a balance either way. Regardless of the market, we’re maxing out our 401(k)s and IRAs, contributing a few hundred a month each to two 529s for our future children (bonus compounding!), and putting a few hundred into a non-retirement VG account. I’m also automatically contributing to a pension.

We have a 15-year mortgage so that’s already on an accelerated pay-down schedule, but we hate having debt again and want it gone. (We bought our house four months after I paid off $90,000 in student loans in 19 months.)

The last year or so, when we’ve had extra money (extra paychecks because we’re paid biweekly, awards, underspent monthly budget), we’ve split the extra among our investment categories but put the lion’s share toward the mortgage (shaving off 1.5 years in the 2 years we’ve had the house- woot woot!). We’re in close to 100% equities because our shortest investment timeframe is for our kids’ college, and we don’t have kids yet (so at least 19 years).

When the dip comes, we’ll back off on the bonus mortgage payments in favor of buying stock. Oh, and I’m working on building up my first blog, so fingers crossed that that diversifies our income at some point. For now, though, I’ll just plan on saving everything we can from our day jobs.

Agree. I don’t have much in there but not sure which direction to go.

I like the idea of knocking out debt while the market’s hot… It all moves the dream closer and frees up even more cash flow later once they’re no longer on the table! Hopefully right when it’s bargain picking time again! :)

No one knows where the economy is going, but I believe it is unlikely that it will continue going up. The past 100 years of history shows that the economy is cyclical. The longer we try to prevent the downward part of the cycle the greater the chance that it will drop. I also believe that it will drop even more the higher it goes. We personally invest in individual stocks and everything on our watchlist is either near or at their 52-week highs. We would rather wait when price meets or drops below value to buy.

While the market is high, we are paying off debt and increasing our emergency fund. Since my wife, Dr. SoS, has a private practice, we discussed how a recession may affect her practice and income. She may see a decrease in visits as some patients are sure to lose their jobs, but since she is a cash practice and does not deal with insurance companies it will most likely affect her less than those that only deal with insurance companies.

I feel my job is pretty secure, but I continue to work hard and make myself as invaluable as possible to hopefully prevent job loss in the case of a downturn. Additionally, I continually study investments and investment strategy as a possible future source of income. Ultimately, our goal is to load up the truck with investments once the stocks we want are on sale.

If the money is not in a retirement account, then I would say that an online savings account would be a great place to put extra cash. That’s where we put ours.

Damn – you are killing it over there!! No house payments?? Where’s your finance blog! :)

HAH!! Excellent analogy!! And smart to adapt your game plan to something YOU’RE comfortable with vs having panic attacks every day :) Sure you might miss out on some gains but at least you’ll be able to sleep better which is always something to be conscious about.

That gold/silver route is always an interesting one to me as a coin collector… And especially popular among Doomsdayers/preppers too if the world implodes and the dollar isn’t worth anything anymore! Of course who knows if we revert back to precious metals in that case, but fascinating stuff to think about in any case…