So picture it.

You're at the gala event of the year.

You walk into the room, you stare across, and you see your ex wearing the exact same outfit you're wearing.

What do you do?

You probably freak out and run out of the room.

Right.

At least that's probably the way most people are feeling right now when it comes to looking at what's going on in the stock market.

Yeah.

Trump's tariffs are rocking the stock market like nobody's business.

And if you've looked at your 401k or your retirement accounts recently, your stomach has probably dropped a bit.

And if it has, you're not alone.

But before you panic and go, start selling your portfolio or going into all cash, when Queer Money Episode number 485, we're breaking down what's happening and what it means for your retirement plan.

So, David, WTF is going on?

Yeah, really?

What, what, what WTF is?

Well, that messy X of is 45 has shown up.

Yeah.

And is cause wreaking havoc.

Trump is implementing, or wants to implement some tariffs like it's the 1930s, apparently, back when America was great.

The last time.

You remember the great.

The great what?

The Great Depression.

Right.

So because of this, investors are freaking out.

Markets don't like shocks like this.

They don't like unpredictability, they don't like chaos.

And that's exactly what we're seeing, especially when that chaos comes from outside the market.

This is coming from basically the political arena, the geopolitical arena, and this is basically freaking out most investors.

Yeah.

Who would have thought that Trump would have brought chaos to our lives?

Jeez.

Exactly.

Fool me once.

Right?

Right.

What I think is so interesting is I feel like he has conditioned his followers to be so strong in their xenophobia that they're so willing to.

They're willing to cut off their hand in the sheer opportunity of being able to cut off another country's pinky.

Right.

Like they're really to sacrifice themselves just so it makes another country hurt just a little bit.

So what does this mean for your 401k or your retirement accounts?

Well, they've probably taken a dip.

I mean, I know the last time we looked at our portfolio last week, we were already down about 200,000.

And I haven't calculated, obviously, what we've.

What we've lost today.

But it's important to remember that dips don't necessarily mean disasters.

Market volatility happens all the time.

We were actually, quite honestly, we were due for a correction anyway.

I know that we're probably in bear market territory at this point, but that should some offset some of the anxiety.

And historically trade tensions and market downturns have always had been followed up by a rebound.

Right.

Long, long term investors, especially those who are 45 and older, we still have some time to recover from, from this if things don't get too chaotic, at least at this point and grow some wealth.

Yeah, I'll just throw in a little couple of definitions to what you just said, John.

A correction is when the, a stock or the market itself is down 10% from its previous high.

A bear market is when it's down that stock or the market is down 20%.

So, so there are plenty of stocks that have crept into that bear market territory, some that were not sad about that happening to Tesla and but that is also affecting a lot of other stocks.

So that's kind of what that means when you hear those words correction and bear market.

Yeah.

And it's important to remember that during the 2018, 2019 China US trade war that WHO implemented that the S&P 500 took had several drops during that timeframe as well.

But then eventually it rebounded by 28% over by the end of 2019.

You know, unless you're retiring next Tuesday, your portfolio isn't ruined as much as it might feel like it.

It's just having a bit of a mood and I think we all are right now.

Yeah, exactly.

I think one of the other other important things to remember here about that is this whole idea is that you're, you're, what you're experiencing, what the market is experiencing right now is a lot of emotion.

And it's not really a good idea to operate a business based on emotion.

Right.

I mean that's what really what you're, you're doing with your portfolio.

So that brings the question, David, what should we not be doing right now?

Right.

And so that is we really need to step away from it and say how do I look at this with a better perspective.

And probably one of the most important things is to not panic sell.

When you sell, you lock in your losses.

Now I'm not saying that you shouldn't sell.

I'm saying don't panic, sell, don't rush out and just sell everything.

It's also important to remember that whether you're two or three years away from retirement or 25 years away from retirement, it's really important to not stop contributing to your retirement accounts, whether that's your employer sponsored retirement account or your Roth IRA or traditional IRA or Sep ira if you're self employed, whatever, keep contributing to those.

When I look back to the timeframes that I think helped us become retirement account millionaires, it really a lot of it had to do with during 2008 and 2009 when the market had tanked and the economy was in crisis.

John and I had just finished paying off our credit card debt and we had been living a very frugal lifestyle.

And instead of inflating our life, we just decided to take all the money that we were sending to our credit cards and start putting that into our retirement accounts.

And that really helped us build buy when the market was down.

And now 20, 25 years later, or not 25, 15, 20 years later, we are looking at a much better situation in part because of that.

So it's important to not think that you can be some, you have some like crystal ball as to what's going on in the market.

I mean, even Wall street wizards right now are kind of scratching their heads going, WTF do we do we do?

Because this is unprecedented time.

So don't try to buy the dip or time the market.

Timing the market is like trying to guess who the winner of Drag Race is from the very first episode.

You know that you're probably going to.

Get a wrong, right?

Yeah, it's almost impossible.

And I will share.

See, Kramer just shared on CNBC that, you know, is that nobody wants to hear this advice right now with all the emotion and volatility that we're dealing with, but it's probably best at this point to just stick it out.

But that being said, talk with your financial advisor and they know your situation a lot more better than we do.

This is just broad general advice that you're getting from us.

Your financial advisor can give you specific advice.

So what do you do now?

Right.

What else?

What can you do?

Yeah, so a good thing to do right now is probably you should be doing have done this anyway.

Now is a good time to review your portfolio and make sure your asset allocation is lined with what your goals and your objectives are when you're going to retire, all that good stuff.

So are you a little bit too aggressive now for us?

Couple weeks ago, we were a little bit too aggressive because we had a lot of gains from especially the tech side of our portfolio.

So fortunately we trimmed some of those gains off and put some of those into cash.

But you might be a little bit too conservative right now.

So talk with your financial advisor to figure out what you need to do to rebalance your portfolio.

Keep contributing to Your portfolio.

Exactly.

As David said, there's so much benefit in dollar cost averaging and it helps smooth out much of this volatility over time.

The longer time goes and we dollar cost averaged into the stock market in 2008, 2009 and that proved beneficial for us.

But maybe dollar cost average into what you need to do to balance your portfolio rather than not locking in those losses, as David said, maybe dollar cost average into whatever positions you need to do to put your portfolio back in line.

And there are three ways that you can.

Dollar cost average.

Yeah, there are three ways to rebalance your portfolio.

Great.

The first one is to actually sell those stocks that are dropping that you probably should have sold a while ago.

But when you sell those and move them into cash, you are locking in those losses, which for some people that may be an appropriate thing to do right now.

The second way to rebalance your portfolio is to sell some of those stocks that are dropping that were more aggressive and buy the more conservative stuff that you should have been holding previously, which most likely is already starting to go up in price because people are doing that right now.

And the third is, as John mentioned, dollar cost averaging into those conservative positions.

When you do that, you're going to automatically swing your portfolio in a slow manner towards where it should actually be.

And that really is this is, this may be the time to log into your 401k account and say, okay, I'm going to stop investing in the S&P 500 and I'm going to move to a bond portfolio or ETF or something like that.

So think about moving from those more conservative or more aggressive positions, your equity positions, international equity positions, small cap positions, and move that in over into something like a bond portfolio, money markets if necessary, if you have a short time period.

But all of that really will help you rebalance your portfolio in a less emotional manner.

Exactly.

And if you're feeling very anxious, one thing that you can do to offset some of that anxiety is to make sure you're flooding your emergency savings account with more cash.

And if and 100% your portfolio, I'm sorry, your emergency savings should be in a high yield savings account of some sort.

So you're getting better than standard broad market interest rates.

Yeah.

So remember that volatility is scary.

I mean that's why it's volatile.

Right.

That's the whole, what the whole purpose of the word is it's actually brings about fear.

And that is something that can have an impact on your feeling towards your future.

But retirement isn't about reacting to headlines.

It's about building a plan that works through this kind of chaos.

So keep going.

You've got this.

Keep building that portfolio.

And remember to, like, share and download and.

Or subscribe wherever you're catching us.

Thank you for joining us for another episode of Queer Money.

And until next time, stay fabulous.