The economic storm, that is.

There is a lot of "rah-rah" over Trump coming back into office within days.  But the economic environment in his first term was very different than it is now.

For one thing housing affordability was double what is today, roughly.  That is you'd have to see house prices cut roughly in half with interest rates at a normal, positive-slope against actual inflation rate.  Current inflation at the monetary level from the government is about 6% so this means a 7+% mortgage, or roughly equal or higher than it is now.

In addition the squeeze on American workers has had four more years to ferment -- especially in tech but not exclusively-so.  This is an insidious and corrosive thing that has been going on for a long time but when you couple it with the end of a 30+ year rate cycle that has now convincingly ended and thus we must expect the other half of the cycle for the next 20 or 30 years you've got trouble with anything economic that depends on increasing debt loads.

IMHO from a personal preparedness standpoint the two best pieces of advice are no revolving debt at all and for the love of all that is Holy do not get yourself into a position where you depend on access to more of it to cover lifestyle or even emergency requirements as it may well not be there.

Back in the 2008 crash, and I expect things to be worse this time around, plenty of people had their credit card company slam their "available credit" down to their outstanding balance.  This of course cuts off more spending but it also does serious damage to your FICO score and thus frequently prohibits getting a loan from someone else because a significant part of that score is "utilization" -- that is, how much on a percentage basis do you have out compared with how much you have available.  You want that number to be low and for a lot people, despite having significant balances, it is -- it is not uncommon for a credit card company to give you a $10,000 line.

If you've got a $2,000 balance that's 20% utilization but if they slam it down to the $2,000 balance that's 100% utilization and will whack your score -- and they may, as they did last time, ratchet it down further as you pay it off so your utilization will remain very high.

This is a greatly-underappreciated risk for those who live their life off the plastic cards in their wallet.  Utilization percentage is roughly 30% of your score, so going from low-to-moderate to "slammed" can easily hit you for 100 points or more all at once.

That is not a small change and the compound effects of it in today's world where insurance companies use credit scoring as part of their pricing system means it won't be confined to interest rates and credit-card availability either -- it can easily ratchet up car and home insurance costs by 20% or more as well or even result in a non-renewal letter.

I cannot predict precisely when a "foldback" sort of event can and will come in the markets and economy but that we are at historically extreme valuation levels in the stock market coupled with severe affordability problems in the broader economy cannot be argued.  Our economy and markets are as dry as the SW California scrub with 80mph Santa Ana winds ripping over both and despite the smug pronouncements out of The Fed and others there is only a belief that someone will be there to buy at an equal or higher price that is behind any of the market.  Even firms that are very stable businesses such as Costco, which has a record of being able to expand earnings over long periods of time by 10% or so annually, is not selling at a 10 or a 15 multiple -- its selling at a 54 PE, which is easily four to five times a reasonable forward expectation -- this is a retailer with a 4% operating margin!

That which you could make a case for as borrowing got cheaper and cheaper over the last of 30 years doesn't work when that cycle ends -- and it has ended.  As that paper has to be rolled over the cost of doing so goes up and that hit drops directly to the bottom line.

No matter where you look in the market today you find this sort of multiple, with it being even more-extreme in certain areas.  Add to this the deterioration internally in the labor report on a quality, not gross employed number basis and the ratcheting upward of Americans' cost of living and the sky is rather gray with the wind picking up.

It is always better to be prepared to not need "freely available" credit and then not have anything horrible happen than to be neck-deep in debt, have all your revolving lines slammed down to their outstanding balance, have your FICO take a 100 point hit instantly as a consequence, your car and homeowners insurance price goes up 20% due to that and then your furnace fails and needs to be replaced right now in the middle of winter.

Don't be that guy.