Personally I'm preparing for this by aggressively paying off our mortgage, putting less money into the market. Also avoiding lifestyle inflation and even cutting back here and there. It's all about reducing fixed cost so that if shit hits the fan, we can absorb the higher cost or lower income as much as possible.
Get some gold (ideally a bit of physical gold but also put some of your investments into gold or broad commodities ETFs) as a hedge against inflation/monetary devaluation, keep some of your wealth in cash or short-term/liquid bonds/treasuries/money market funds if you predict an equities and real estate crash, buy some real estate or real estate ETFs to get a bit of real estate exposure if you have zero, buy stocks if you have none. Shift a bit of your equities into international ETFs if you only have US stocks.
Splitting up into equal buckets of cash, real estate, stocks, bonds, gold/commodities, hell even a bit of crypto, hell buy some goods upfront to hedge inflation like dry, shelf stable food - this is ultimately gonna be a less volatile ride than just sitting around and doing nothing.
"We're fucked but there's nothing we can do" is a defeatist attitude if you sense financial turmoil but can't predict what type, just don't put all your eggs in one basket, and maybe reduce your diversification once you sense things are getting better.
Still, my sense is that there won't be any safe havens. It will be global, it will be stocks, everyone will be poorer so real estate will be unsellable, inflation destroying cash holdings…
Serious question (I am no scholar on history), where were the safe harbors during the Great Depression?
My ignorant notion is that there were none. But if you held on to your stocks for a couple decades, you did fine … just not during those two decades though.
Serious question (I am no scholar on history), where were the safe harbors during the Great Depression?