Welcome to Money As If, a weekly newsletter where we alternately embrace, lament, ridicule, rethink, and reclaim our (forcibly) strange relationships with money.

In today’s edition:

• We need to talk about Recession

• Nice try, Meta!

• Parent trap

— Jeanine

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IN THESE, OUR (POSSIBLE) END TIMES

We need to talk about Recession

I don’t want to, truly, because (a) I rather not have a recession and (b) while Money As If is partially about preparing for possibly bad future times, I’d like to think of it as a respite from the now times. Doom and gloom is less doom-and-gloomy when it’s still in the abstract. (At least that’s the idea.)

But given that the market got absolutely roiled this week, leading to lots of scary headlines and televised hand-wringing, it feels out of pocket for a money newsletter not to talk about the thing that's probably top of mind when people think about their money.

So, let's double-click on the recession chatter, shall we?

What’s causing the concern?

Recession speculation accelerated this week after the on-again, off-again, on-again (and now supersized) U.S. trade wars triggered some flashing warning signs, including:

• revised Q1 gross domestic product (GDP) estimates

• an inverted yield curve (yipes!)

• waning small business optimism

• and several salty Wall Street predictions

Personally? I'm most alarmed that you can still buy all kinds of Cowboy Carter Tour tickets. (I'm 99.9% joking here, but there is actual quantitative data that says consumer confidence and spending — traditional signs of a cooling economy — are down.)

Are we headed for a recession?

Hard to say. A recession is a very specific thing — quantified largely as two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth — and there are also signs of the U.S. economy’s resilience, including some recent good news around job openings and inflation.

“Coming into 2025, the U.S. economy was expected to grow at a slower pace and for job growth to moderate, so that’s to be expected,” says Greg McBride, chief financial analyst at Bankrate.com. “Time will tell if we see a more pronounced slowdown, but the economy is coming from a position of strength — low unemployment and solid growth — that provides some cushion against recession.”

What's clearer, however, is that the future is unclear, particularly around U.S. economic policy — and that, in and of itself, can have ripple effects.

"Businesses tend to cut back on investment spending and hiring during periods of instability and uncertainty, and we certainly have that now,” says Elliot Parker, professor and chair of the Department of Economics at the University of Nevada, Reno. "The estimated chances of a recession have risen. Some economists suggest 20%. Some suggest 40%. That is still less than a coin flip, but even if we don't go into negative territory, I think the odds are high that growth will slow substantially."

And, in that case, it can’t hurt to prepare.

So how can you?

Honestly? The most important thing to do is beef up emergency savings.

Unemployment insurance isn't exactly robust. Most states offer up to 26 weeks of benefits, ranging from $235 to $823 a week. In New Jersey, with max benefits, an individual nets around $3,148 a month, which, speaking from experience, is not exactly enough to cover even mandatory monthly expenses, so it's good to build a buffer.

“Look at what you need to keep the bills paid and make sure you have a multiple of at least three to six months in a high-yield savings account,” says Lauren Gadkowski Lindsay, a Certified Financial Planner (CFP) at Beacon Financial Planning.

You can save more by spending less, creating a budget, and paying down high-interest debt. But I going to guess you're doing these things already, or if you're not, it's for good reason, so let's talk contingency plans.

This is me sharing

I weathered two recessions in my adult life — the Great one back in 2007 and the COVID one in 2020 — and experienced the same number of layoffs, though, incidentally, for me, the two didn’t coincide.

That's not me calling me the premier expert on tough financial times, but I learned a few in-the-weed-sy things from those incidents that might prove helpful to anyone facing the same stressors.

Honestly, some of the moves below aren’t … great, meaning I wouldn’t utilize or advocate for them in boom times (hello, depleted retirement funds!). But they can help you white-knuckle your way through lean times, should they occur, particularly if you’re emergency-cash-strapped, so I figured I’d share. Consider the following …

If you feel layoffs are imminent

• Avoid taking vacation days if your state's regulation or company policy requires the payout of accrued paid time off (PTO) after termination, as that can give you some more runway. (Unfortunately, this strategy won't apply if you work for a company with unlimited PTO — which is why the shine's worn off that "benefit.”)

• Lower or pause your 401(k) contributions. Not ideal, I know, especially if your employer offers a match, but if you have no-or-low emergency savings, it'll up your short-term cash flow.

• Adjusting your tax withholding can also juice cash flow, and it makes sense if you suspect you’ll earn less in a given tax year than previously expected. (It’ll affect the size of your annual tax refund, though.) You can change your tax withholding by filing a new W-4 with your employer.

If you are laid off

• Apply for unemployment ASAP because there's usually a lag between when you're approved and when you can start collecting benefits.

• See if you qualify for Medicaid or premium tax credits that can significantly lower the cost of health insurance purchased through the Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplaces. Healthcare.gov can help you determine your options.

• You can also COBRA to stay on your former job's health care plan, though this option is pretty pricey since your employer is no longer subsidizing your monthly premium payments.

• See if you can get your student loan payment lowered or deferred. Again, not ideal, because you won't be getting any closer to having that loan off your back (and interest may still accrue), but it's generally preferable to missing a mortgage payment. NerdWallet has a good summation of your options.

• Retirement fund hardship withdrawals are a thing — and a record-high number of Americans are going this route — but there are better ways to take one. Namely, try to tap a Roth IRA if you can, as they're subject to fewer restrictions and tax penalties, and look into a 401(k) loan vs. a straight withdrawal as they have fewer downsides, though these loans are tricky if you're no longer with the employer who sponsored the account. Bankrate's got a good guide on how to minimize the drawbacks.

• Sign up for The Job Hopper substack, run by bonafide career experts Allison Doyle and Jen Hubley Luckwaldt, if you're looking for modern job search tips. (They've got a particularly good guide for recently unemployed federal workers.)

What strategies have you used to get through a job loss, recession, or both? Let me know via email ([email protected]) for inclusion in a potential future issue!

CHEAT SHEET

PRICE TAGS

Social commerce edition

Behold all the pricey and slightly weird (or at least mismatched) stuff that Meta keeps trying to sell me. You'd think with all the data mining, they'd know us better. And yet …

🦇 $1,800

for a bedazzled Jay Strongwater Batman Box, which I think is a fancy paperweight you can use to store loose change or a few pairs of earrings? Who knows?

💕 $463.80

for buying and shipping a bottle of Pink Panther perfume from House of Sillage, an “haute parfumerie” followed by Vanderpump Rules’ Tom Schwartz, BTW. Click on one bedazzled box, get ads for lots of bedazzled bottles, I suppose.

🏈 $89.99

for a book of historic newspapers about the Pittsburgh Steelers (not my favorite football team, which, incidentally, is well-documented all over social media) from archivist and memorabilia retailer Historic Newspapers.

♐️ $75.00

for a sleep mask from Australian brand Slip, designed to be worn by Sagittariuses (Sagittari?), which, yup, is not my star sign.

💡$55.00

What I almost paid for this facial sculptor from True Beauty Glow or Luminensce or Luminique or the Lumineers or something (I dunno, there were a lot of companies trying to sell me this thing, probably all the same one), even though I barely spend on anti-aging stuff. Their ads were so convincing; the online reviews less so!

FRESH GREEN

Nowadays, most financial takes are boilerplate. These aren't.

• Remember last week when we were talking about building wealth? Well, apparently, you can make $1M off a health savings account (HSA) … if you open one early, contribute the max each year, and never, ever use any of the funds.

• It’s not just you! Shopping in stores is miserable because most shops are understaffed and lack inventory. (Blame Internet!)

• I enjoyed this Morningstar interview with personal finance expert Ramit Sethi, which is ostensibly about how couples should talk about finances but dips into a broader need to challenge conventional money philosophies, perhaps best highlighted by this quote: “Money should be fun. The point of money is not to accuse each other. The point of money is not even to save it. The point of money is to use it to live a rich life.”

PARENT TRAP

And, finally, today, in things I would buy if, you know, I could just buy things …

Butterfly shoes

I want pretty much every shoe Sophia Webster sells — yes, even the re-skinned Wicked ones — but these mini-Mary Janes in the accessories maker’s signature butterfly design have me wishing there was a new baby in my life that I could buy them for.

And, yes, at $195, they’re less expensive than the items typically highlighted in this section, but hey, this is our recession issue. Plus, how many times can their fast-growing owner possibly wear them?

Got questions, comments, receipts, tips, thirst traps, etc. you’d like to share? Send them to [email protected].