When the supply chain, inflation, and stock market has you stressed

We don’t know much about the COVID-19 Variant Omicron. One thing we do know, it’s putting the stock market in a steady decline over the past two days. WDIO Financial Expert, Barry Bigelow says this volatility isn’t necessary a new thing, we just have a lot more information available to us all the time.

“Information is more available than ever before and people are more connected to their stock portfolios, their IRAs and their 401ks than they ever have been,” said Bigelow. “There’s always been volatility. Things like this have always affected the market.”

But Bigelow says things are much different now when you get constant alerts on your smart phone updating the performance of your portfolio. You would not had that instant access 20 years ago. We were more disconnected from that volatility. That helped us stay calm. There was much less stress.

The stock market tried to rebound on Wednesday but the early market gains quickly vanished when the first case of Omicron was reported in California.

“You got to have faith that markets are going to recover the way they have in the past and have a plan that if you are in retirement making sure you have enough money to last," said Bigelow. “But if you’re approaching retirement make sure you are taking advantage of those dips because you are getting to buy at a lower level which might actually speed up your retirement if you time it correctly.”

And what about inflation and supply chain issues? We are paying more for all kinds of things right now.

We asked Bigelow if there was anything we could be doing to help our own finances during this turbulence? “We’re the country that invented supply chain. We’re the one who invented instant access to a product because we wanted to have them in two days,” said Bigelow. “So, I have great faith that those who put the supply chain together are going to fix it. And so for now until some of these supply chain issues get fixed it is a situation where it’s time to ‘tighten the belt’, maybe not take that extra trip that you were planning on taking this winter. And really we should see some of the supply chain stuff start to sort itself out after the high spike in demand that comes with Christmas shopping settles out.”