Much of our current situation is out of our control.

We don’t get to decide how well others work to fight the spread of the COVID virus. We don’t get to decide how our government is responding. And we don’t get to decide how our company is treating our employment status right now.

Yet despite all of these external factors weighing on us, our current condition is largely dependent on our past actions.

As one example, our spending over the past few years has a huge impact on our current financial situation. Whether we’re unemployed right now, or otherwise receiving less income than before, is out of our control. But the impact of this decreased income is.

When the economy is booming, it’s easy to spend every dollar that comes in. We’re inclined to maximize the value of our home and car, and to spend freely since our budget calculations are often based in the assumption of continued, or increasing salary, over time.

But that assumption certainly wasn’t safe this year, and it’s never been safe over a long enough time horizon. Financial hardships, whether caused by a global pandemic or something more acute such as a family situation or a change in employment status, happen all the time. It’s almost guaranteed that every person who makes it to traditional retirement age will see several of these experiences throughout their life.

We can’t prevent these challenging external situations, but we can determine how well we’re positioned to respond.

Something simple such as keeping several months of accessible assets is a possible starting place. It certainly isn’t the best approach to maximize returns (that money could’ve grown substantially if it was in the market over the past 10 years), but maximized returns isn’t necessarily the goal. If we’re instead looking to optimize for happiness, I’d argue that the stability of avoiding financial stress in times like this outweighs the value we’d receive by doing nearly anything else with that excess money (such as buying fancier toys or trying to deploy it to make more money).

If we really want to dig deep, there’s even another layer to explore.

Again, we can’t control whether our job has been obsolete for the past few months, or even whether it will ever return. But what we can control is our skill set.

Someone with a valuable skill, whether that’s healthcare, engineering, coding, marketing, design, customer service, sales, or you name it, is in a much better position right now that someone without an easily transferable skill set. Even better if several valuable skills can be paired.

Obviously it’s easy to say this now while the world is flipped on its head, and it’s easy to be scared and save money when everything is so uncertain, but that’s exactly the point. The way to thrive in these situations isn’t to respond after they happen, it’s to prepare ourselves when times are good.

Things will eventually turn back around. Whether it’s months or years from now, I’m confident there will be another time when we’re all generally happy and content.

The challenge at that time will be to remember how we feel now. It’ll be easy to relax and enjoy the sunny skies, but it’s important to remember that another storm is eventually coming.

-Brandon