in the day and age of click-bait, you can find a million articles, news alerts, tweets, stories, and other methods of quick communication driving fear and worry in the minds of americans. many of them these days are warning of a recession and giving us all a million reasons to worry and stress about the state of the US and world economies. yeah, it’s not as good as the news would have told us it has been in the past two years (or decade, really), but there are couple of nuggets of information that are giving me hope that this isn’t going to be the recession most of us millennials experienced as we were entering the workforce back in the late 2000s/early 2010s. here’s what is making me hopeful:
- americans still have a considerable amount of money in savings and have been conscious of how they are spending in the past few years. sure, consumer spending has had a boom in the past few years, but a lot of people saved that money that came from stimulus, wages, or other. the downside, of course are things like inflation, supply issues, and wage growth not keeping up with the rising prices, but knowing that at least a small subset of americans (not talking about jeff bezos here, guys. everyday americans) are better off than pre-2020 is heartening to me.
- we are learning SO much, SO fast. we live in an information age, and while it creates a s**tload of chaos most of the time, it can be used to our advantage both as a consumer and for those that are leading and steering their organizations, big and small. what would have taken us years to understand only a decade ago now takes a fraction of that time to understand. PIVOT!
- i don’t see there being a housing crash a la late 2000s. there has been constrained inventory (less homes built) and more stringent guardrails while lending, meaning there is still a shortage of homes for those that want to own. there are downsides to this, for sure: pricing people out of the market, gentrification, and a number of other things, but this fact can be used as a bit of perspective in looking at what might help us avoid a housing crisis many of us have lived through before. experts predict instead of a dropoff in home prices, we will just see slowed growth.
- the rise in personal financial literacy/building wealth. maybe it’s me, but never before have i seen more candor and transparency in people sharing, learning, and being open about wanting to take charge of their personal finances. i, personally, have been reading a few books and re-structuring how i manage my own personal finances (along with how i fund my businesses) and it makes me feel more empowered about maneuvering through an uncertain economy and everything that comes with that.
don’t get me wrong; there’s a lot of uncertainty when it comes to the economy and what it means for daily life. my grocery bills are WILD. i’m SO thankful i don’t have a baby using formula. and for me, i’m thinking twice about driving anywhere these days when i previously wouldn’t have given it a thought. but i am optimistic knowing that some of the things that people take as a negative can actually be a positive indicator about how the economy will rebound. perspective is a gift, and i’m confident, borderline enthusiastic, that we are in the middle of a global shift that will benefit us all in the long run.
if you take nothing else from this, know that there are reasons to be optimistic, should you choose.