Welcome to my Weekly Recap December 7th Edition where I discuss some of the key events of the past week and provide an update on what I’m doing with my finances.

Stock Market Correction

It’s now official that stocks are in full blown correction mode.  The S&P 500 closed down again on Friday.  It’s now down 10% from its al-time high on September 21st.  Some analysts think that this is just a bumpy phase and the Bull Market still has another year left to go.  I’m not one of them.  I think that there are so many headwinds that this we are headed into a bear market for some time now.

Keep in mind that this has been the longest period of economic expansion ever; made possible by cheap money and over-levered consumers.  Wage and investment gains were largely made by the one percenters.  Entire industries are experiencing significant downturns (ie. energy).  Not to mention the crypto collapse and decline in the FAANG stocks (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google).  A short while ago it would have been unthinkable that these darling stocks would fall so much.  Remember Buffet’s old saying: “be fearful when others are greedy and be greedy when others are fearful.”

So if you’re thinking about buying stocks now is looking like a pretty good time.  Yes, in my opinion the market will go lower still.  But as I discovered in 2008-2009, as long as I kept on buying through the market collapse and bear market, I had excellent returns when the market recovered.

There’s no question that it sucks watch your investments decrease in value but in the long run buying the dip and buying through a bear market has been a great strategy because we’re buying “low”.  Plus you get a nice stream of dividends to hold you through the hard times.  Speaking of dividends, I just ran the numbers for November and it’s great.  I’ll be publishing my passive income report this week so stay tuned!

Basement Reno Update

Well we’re definitely in the home stretch now with the basement reno.  The carpet was installed last week.  We went with a hypoallergenic carpet made by Mohawk from the Air.o carpet line.  The carpet is supposed to be breathable and does not have traditional underlay that traps dirt etc.  We laid it on top of the Dry Barrier sub floor so we’re hoping that our basement will by nice and dry even in the humid months.  The baseboard will be installed this coming week.  I’ll definitely be taking a break from renovations in 2019.  Here are some pics:

Have a great weekend and thanks for reading my Weekly Recap December 7th Edition.