What's up, everyone? All right. So in this episode, we're going to talk about preparing for a recession. In fact, I've been preparing my whole life I Grew up with in a family that had generational Trauma from my great grandfather losing everything during the Great Depression and that had a profound impact on his children that he raised and my mom when she was growing up. she lost her mother when she was very young.

she lost her father when she was very young. She definitely experienced the feeling of losing maybe everything in a sense. And so when she was Raising Me and my younger sister, we grew up in a family where we felt a lot of scarcity. We felt a penny saved the dollar earned.

You know, something that breaks even something as silly as an old marker? You save it because you never know when maybe you'll need that last little drip of ink to. let's write a note or pay a bill. So I think that in a lot of ways. I've been preparing for bad times my whole life and this puts me in a position where I can really give you hopefully some helpful tips on the things that I've done and the things that I would do if I hadn't already started them to help me be ready for possibly bad times ahead.

Plan for the worst and hope for the best that's about that's being prepared. So why don't we jump here onto the screen and I'll show you um, a little bit of uh, what I would say are probably the four biggest steps that you can take today to prepare for a recession. Number one: diversify your income with side hustles and we'll go over each of these in more detail. Number two: carefully review your expenses and reduce where possible.

Number three: begin saving in the event income slows or stops completely, and number four: learn how to fix things yourself and become self-reliant. This is Huge. So many people in this world are Specialists. We do one thing really well and then we depend on other people to do everything else.

Now you know this. This goes back for me totally to thinking about my great grandfather and these old farmers who up in Vermont you know knew how to put together things. They knew how to fix things. They were self-reliant A self-reliant person is less prone to having to require a bailout or something during an economic recession because you've learned how to care for yourself in in all ways in all aspects of your life.

So on the Whiteboard here. Um, when we talk first about the side hustle, this is one that I think about a lot, you know. I I Think that for me, graduating from college in 2009 and coming into this job market that was, you know, just obviously terrible at that time. I Had no choice but to be creative and to look for alternative ways to make money.

You know it just. We were in a market where people with master's degrees were applying for unpaid internships. so even someone with a regular college degree unless you're willing to work unpaid there, it was really hard to get a job and so you know for me I was looking at the world through this lens of nothing is guaranteed. Nothing is promised I had just lost my father I was 21 22 years old when he passed away and you know all of a sudden I I watched this man who you know had worked hard.

He didn't even get to live a retirement. his retirement was taken away. So I feel like I don't buy into the belief of just you know keep chugging along doing something that makes you miserable because someday you'll be able to retire and then you can be happy that day may never come. So when I was coming into the workforce I was thinking about what do I actually want to do What? How? How can I live a life where I'm excited to wake up every single day and for me, side hustles.

This gives me a real sense of well, self-reliance for sure. it makes me feel more confident. It gives me a sense of security knowing that I am not depending all of my income or deriving all of my income from one place and this isn't something that happens overnight for sure being able to really develop true side hustles that actually generate any meaningful income that takes time. but what better time to start thinking about it than now? The best time is is yesterday.

If you didn't start yesterday, then start today to start thinking about what kind of side hustles could you do that would make you less dependent on one source of income so you are more. Diversified The more Diversified you are, the more resilient you are, the more flexible you are. One source of income could decline, another one could pick up, and you're able to weather through the storm. So side hustles can be anything from driving Uber You know, to day trading or um, you know, selling things on Craigslist going to yard sales and picking things up and then reselling them.

I Mean there are a million different side hustles that people do. You have to be self-motivated The people who get through these tough times the best are those who are very driven, self-motivated And for me, the drive it doesn't come from a place of wanting to make money. and I think that's important because I think wanting to make money is not always a good motivator. The drive for me as I seek a feeling of security because I am chronically insecure.

That comes from the way I was raised. It comes from this generational trauma, this fear of scarcity of losing everything, and the only way that I feel secure is by working and building these side hustles and these different hobbies and these different sources of income. Because that helps alleviate that feeling that I have inside. So that sense of insecurity is an incredible motivator.

Now during times where people are getting concerned and starting to think about recession, that can create a sense of insecurity and that insecurity can be a really powerful motivator for taking action. So number one: diversifying your income with side hustles in any way that you can and anything you can do to get that started, you should have started yesterday. You should start a month ago. but if you could start today, that's awesome.

But you know, like I said for me, it was trading. That's obviously not for everyone. I'm trying to give you know maybe some advice that I wish I would have heard when I was you know, 22 years old coming out of college and you know or sort of you know coming into the workforce. whatever.

um that I didn't get So this won't apply to everyone and what has worked for me won't apply for everyone. But for me, trading was something that worked Now number two: carefully review expenses and reduce where possible. So for me, when I was living in Vermont and um I was going through this period of learning how to trade, I was not making a lot of money at first I wasn't making well, I was making money and then I lose it, make money and then lose it. So I was net negative and the problem there was that I knew I had a limited Runway of how long I could go without generating some real income and I bet every one of you right now could sort of calculate how much time you have.

if you had no income, you know how long would you be able to make the money you've got right now stretch how long would it last and it might not be long I mean and I understand that the reality for me in those days was I had a very short Runway So anything that I was able to do to reduce my cost of living and just buy myself a little bit more time I was absolutely doing that. That does require making some sacrifices. One of the things that I found in myself. um for instance.

so I had an older car I had a couple older cars but one of them was a Saab 9000 um it was an it was had over 200 000 miles on it. This car was old uh and it would break down sometimes and so it required me to be willing to fix it myself. But you know what? fixing it myself did it created a huge boost of confidence like wow, I can take out and put in a new axle on this car. That's pretty cool and you know what? How did I learn it? How did I figure that out? Watching YouTube videos you can watch YouTube videos and everything.

My dishwasher is broken. well you know what? and uh, this this one um is um is kind of number four here. Um, becoming self-reliant You know when it comes learning to fix things, learning to fix things on your own is such a valuable skill. and I don't mean to sound like you know, like a grandfather or something like an old man, but I but I really believe that if you can develop some of these um skills and and they're not all hard to necessarily obtain like let's say.

So just as if for example, my dishwasher last week was not working, there was like an error message and I was like what is this and I was just like I don't know So on the one hand I could have said you know what, Call someone to fix the dishwasher and let's have them come and fix it I don't know what's wrong with it and on the other hand, naturally I'm thinking well let me see if I can fix this myself. Worst case scenario: I don't fix it I was gonna have to call the repairman anyways. best case scenario: I fix it and I get a little boost of I don't know, dopamine or something I Feel like hey Serotonin? Wow. You actually did something for yourself.

You get a little pat on the back, you feel good, you feel like you've accomplished something. and and I went on. YouTube and I Google You know YouTube Searched the error message and some people had some suggestions of what had worked for them. I Tried one of them.

It worked like wow. That's awesome. That just saved me. You know, 200 having to call someone to come out and fix something, right? So and listen: I'm not telling you to take apart your um, you know, your circuit breaker panel and start.

You know, putting your hands in there. But there are some things that you can safely where the stakes are lower. Try to fix it yourself and if it doesn't work, then you're already gonna have to call a repairman anyway. So at least you tried and you learned something out of it.

I Think that? um, I I Really think that that's important? So then we're talking about number three saving. Listen. I Get it. You know, If you're right now in a sort of paycheck to paycheck mode, saving is hard.

It's hard to put away anything in a meaningful way for saving. Obviously, if you've been able to review your expenses and trim here in one way or another, then that's going to make saving a little bit easier. Um, you know I have this sticky note right here that I have for my trading: Chipping away small gains, adjusting Daily Goal: This is recession talk. This is about being willing to batten down the hatches, hunker down, and just chip away at small gains until things get better.

And be willing to, you know, come up a little bit short. This is one of the things that it's really easy for people to get um down on themselves. you know I said I thought this is where I was going to be at you know I graduated from college I thought I was going to graduate from college and you know there will be jobs waiting for me now I had this degree I'd spent money on it I'd be able to, you know, get a job. you know right away that wasn't the case for me I didn't come right out of the job right out of the college and have a bunch of jobs waving my face.

What I actually ended up doing myself was I did a an internship and then that internship turned into a job which didn't pay a lot of money and then um, as the economy really started to slow down I saw the writing on the wall that I was going to lose that job and that's when I switched and ended up getting into the market as a as a Trader trying to day trade because the thing with trading that I thought at the time was you know the Market's open every day so well you know Monday through Friday Um so what? I may not be able to find a job in any day, but on any day I can sit down I can study the market and maybe I could start finding some opportunities. You know, maybe I can start developing a strategy again. You have to have the right aptitude, the right risk tolerance, and everything else to make that happen. That's not going to be for everyone.

but you know what? I also did was I built a I built a community I started creating a ton of YouTube videos I opened my YouTube account more than 10 years ago so this is a long time ago I started doing a bunch of YouTube videos I started um, you know I had my blog over at Warrior trading. There were some affiliate links on the blog for different things and so that was again diversifying. It was a little side hustle I had my trading I had the blog. you know then I wrote a book I had the book.

you know? so it's like you just you just start adding a little bit here, a little bit there, a little bit there and I really am a believer that if you are genuinely enjoying what you're doing and it's making you some money, you have got it made. I mean that is awesome and if that means you have to make some sacrifices versus someone that's got maybe a regular job like a nine to five who's kind of maybe a cognitive machine doesn't really like their job but gets paid better, gets better benefits I would rather be the person making less but enjoying what I'm doing it really hands down that that to me is so much more meaningful. Again, that's not going to be everyone but I think for me uh you know when I hear about recession talk I'm just like this is I've been dealing with this like for forever like I you know I remember in the 1999.com bubble you know my my mom my parents complaining about you know everything that was happening in the market, then you know and then we had 911 and then when the the war in the in the Middle East I mean it's just been like one thing after another. You know for what it's worth.

I Watched my mom she worked at a job for over 40 years. same job for over 40 years. unceremoniously laid off, gone after over 40 years of work working at the same place. So I just I think that for me, graduating from college during the Great Recession left me and losing my father when I was young left me in this sort of position and belief that um, nothing is guaranteed.

You never know how long you're going to live. You never know what life is going to have in store for you. So you should try to enjoy every single day as much as you can and and be. And just like, live a life where you feel resilient and you feel Diversified and you can handle getting some punches thrown at You that's going to make you a stronger person long long term.

So if these four steps can help you get headed in that direction, thinking about side hustles carefully looking at and accounting for your expenses, starting to save and and this can I mean you know I'm not telling you to go hoard things, but you know saving money is hoarding money so this is just preparing. You could prepare by buying an extra can of um, you know, tomato sauce every time you go to the grocery store, just putting on a Shelf It's just this is like meant it's a mentality is what it is and becoming self-reliant as much as you can. Self-sufficiency self-reliance. Those are the things that make me feel the best.

and even if right now you said Ross I'll give you a job you know or I'll buy where you're trading from you and but you have to work for me. you know every day for the next 10 years I wouldn't do that I even if I had a job that paid more money I wouldn't do that because I want to be independent. Being independent. You know that's probably a big thing that I think a lot of people that graduate around the same time as I did have that feeling of we need to be independent you know and um, you know, if you don't want to work for the man and you know many of us don't want to you're gonna have to figure out a different way to get by an alternative path and you know it's up to you to figure out what that might be I hope this is maybe point to you in one direction or another, giving you some feedback, giving you some some food for thought at the very least.

Uh, but these are the things that I've done in my life to help me prepare. So a recession. if it's Gonna Come you know it's gonna come and then this is also accepting that we have no control over whether or not it comes. The only thing that we can do is be resilient, be Diversified and be prepared because it can come out of nowhere.

you know, 2020 covid that came out of nowhere. So and at that time I was uh, I was probably just as prepared then for something happening as I am today because that's how I've lived my life. So I hope this has been helpful and you know, as it pertains to trading, I'll say as always that my results are not typical. Success in trading is something that I'm I'm very fortunate to have, but certainly doesn't happen for everyone so there's no guarantee that's gonna work for you.

But you know as I always, if you're interested, you're welcome to check it out. Uh, so manage your risk, take it slow and I hope this is giving you some good food for thought and I'll see you here for the next episode real soon.