|
I hear a lot of things. I personally believe that the net result of all of this in a few (3-5) years when the worst part of it shakes out is that a lot of people who used to have equity will now be renting, but living in basically the same areas/levels: this is going to result in a very large net equity transfer to those who have cash on hand or cash flows in the next few years, at the expense of wage slaves who get totally fucked because their employers collapse over the summer and unemployment skyrockets. Lots of large companies are going to do big layoffs to survive. Many others are going to dump their entire workforces when they go under entirely. Large industries like travel and tourism and entertainment and gambling and the related services for same are going to get scaled back for years. Money for the non-wealthy (and by wealthy I include pretty much everyone who knows pointer math or web programming, as even having $-20k in assets if you're able to make $100k+ puts you far better off than most) is going to become harder and harder to come by. I expect this to result in a lot of evictions when the courts reopen, and lots of foreclosures about 3-6 months after the layoffs peak in 3-4 months. All of the figures I am guessing at here are +/- ~10 weeks and are sketchy guessing at best, because who the fuck knows what's going to happen the rest of the year with any potential second or third waves of disease, or governmental closure orders, or even the outbreak of another world war. It sounds like you have savings and income. Personally, with all of this uncertainty, I'd guard both as carefully as you can. Millionaires can afford to take bigger risks right now, normal people with nest eggs generally cannot, as it's not certain that the jobs will be as plentiful or high-paying in the next ten years as they were the last. If in doubt, stick with the index fund, and just "set it and forget it". If you want to get more actively involved (or if you don't plan to change cities much and don't already own a home), real estate is almost always a good long term investment as well. My advice would be markedly different if you were asking about $8M or $800k and not $80k, but $80k isn't a ton of money these days (I'm guessing it's less than a year of your gross income) so I personally would go lower-risk for the first few hundred k before ramping up the potential for higher returns. |