Photo courtesy Bucknell University
How to Cope with Unstable Economic Times
LEWISBURG – There is lots of uncertainty in the US economy right now, high inflation and the nation has reached the debt ceiling. Bucknell University Associate Professor of Accounting Stacy Mastrolia says there are three things we can do.
One is to spend strategically, focusing where you can make more impact, “I think that there are areas, like insurance, that we don’t look at very often, where we might be able to better reward ourselves by pricing it around, more so than driving to one grocery store or another for $6 eggs.”
She says there are also ways to protect your income, “If you own something that you can rent out, if you can protect your income with a side hustle, if you feel your income is in danger certainly we can be doing things on the wage front.”
Mastrolia also says finding a way to clean off debt as quickly as possible is key as well, with interest rates still rising.
Overall, she says there’s still some hope in wake of the economic uncertainty, “The way it tends to work is it cycles, and we will come through this cycle likely, and our 401k balances will all recover. We’re affected very little, assuming you’re not involved in a government shutdown, by these macroeconomic policies in the long-term. But in the short term, it could be scary.”
You can hear more analysis and information from Stacy Mastrolia on the WKOK.com Podcast Page or wherever you listen to podcasts.
