April 8, 2025 • 10 mins
Don’t Let a Market Tantrum Wreck Your Retirement Glow-Up
The stock market’s throwing a fit again—cue the dramatic music and the ghost of 1930s-style tariffs. But before you clutch your pearls and cash out your 401(k), let’s talk strategy. On this episode of Queer Money, we break down what all this market chaos actually means for your retirement dreams—and why it’s not the time to panic.
We're serving up calm, clarity, and a reminder that emotional investing is so last season. Selling in a panic? That just locks in your losses and wrecks your long-term glam plan. Instead, we spill the tea on why keeping those retirement contributions flowing—rain or shine—is the best way to build true wealth.
Because here’s the truth: retirement should be a well-planned runway strut, not a frantic sprint in heels during a hurricane.
Takeaways:
- ✨ Don’t sell in a snit - Panic selling when the market dips is like breaking up with your sugar daddy during a minor disagreement—it might feel right in the moment, but you’ll miss the long-term benefits. Hold steady and don’t lock in those losses.
- ✨ Keep those contributions coming, honey - Whether you’re 25 or 65, consistency is key. Retirement investing isn’t a short fling—it’s a committed relationship. Keep funding those accounts, even when the market feels like it’s ghosting you.
- ✨ History’s got your back (and your portfolio) - Markets have been drama queens before—wars, recessions, scandals—but they always bounce back. Think of downturns as the messy middle of a glow-up montage.
- ✨ Check your financial feng shui - Now’s a great time to review your portfolio. Is your asset mix aligned with your risk vibe and retirement goals? If not, it might be time for a little financial redecorating.
Topics Covered:
- 00:01 - The Gala Event Dilemma
- 00:39 - The Impact of Tariffs on the Stock Market
- 02:57 - Understanding Market Corrections and Bear Markets
- 06:41 - Strategies for Portfolio Management During Volatility
- 07:45 - Rebalancing Your Portfolio Strategies
Mentioned in this episode:
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Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:16):
So picture it.
You're at the gala event ofthe year.
You walk into the room, youstare across, and you see your ex
wearing the exact same outfityou're wearing.
What do you do?
You probably freak out and runout of the room.
(00:36):
Right.
At least that's probably theway most people are feeling right
now when it comes to lookingat what's going on in the stock market.
Yeah.
Trump's tariffs are rockingthe stock market like nobody's business.
And if you've looked at your401k or your retirement accounts
recently, your stomach hasprobably dropped a bit.
And if it has, you're not alone.
But before you panic and go,start selling your portfolio or going
(00:58):
into all cash, when QueerMoney Episode number 485, we're breaking
down what's happening and whatit means for your retirement plan.
So, David, WTF is going on?
Yeah, really?
What, what, what WTF is?
Well, that messy X of is 45has shown up.
Yeah.
And is cause wreaking havoc.
(01:20):
Trump is implementing, orwants to implement some tariffs like
it's the 1930s, apparently,back when America was great.
The last time.
You remember the great.
The great what?
The Great Depression.
Right.
So because of this, investorsare freaking out.
Markets don't like shocks like this.
(01:44):
They don't likeunpredictability, they don't like
chaos.
And that's exactly what we'reseeing, especially when that chaos
comes from outside the market.
This is coming from basicallythe political arena, the geopolitical
arena, and this is basicallyfreaking out most investors.
(02:17):
Yeah.
Who would have thought thatTrump would have brought chaos to
our lives?
Jeez.
Exactly.
Fool me once.
Right?
Right.
What I think is so interestingis I feel like he has conditioned
his followers to be so strongin their xenophobia that they're
so willing to.
They're willing to cut offtheir hand in the sheer opportunity
(02:38):
of being able to cut offanother country's pinky.
Right.
Like they're really tosacrifice themselves just so it makes
another country hurt just alittle bit.
So what does this mean foryour 401k or your retirement accounts?
Well, they've probably taken a dip.
I mean, I know the last timewe looked at our portfolio last week,
we were already down about 200,000.
And I haven't calculated,obviously, what we've.
(02:59):
What we've lost today.
But it's important to rememberthat dips don't necessarily mean
disasters.
Market volatility happens allthe time.
We were actually, quitehonestly, we were due for a correction
anyway.
I know that we're probably inbear market territory at this point,
but that should some offsetsome of the anxiety.
And historically tradetensions and market downturns have
always had been followed up bya rebound.
Right.
(03:19):
Long, long term investors,especially those who are 45 and older,
we still have some time torecover from, from this if things
don't get too chaotic, atleast at this point and grow some
wealth.
Yeah, I'll just throw in alittle couple of definitions to what
you just said, John.
A correction is when the, astock or the market itself is down
10% from its previous high.
(03:40):
A bear market is when it'sdown that stock or the market is
down 20%.
So, so there are plenty ofstocks that have crept into that
bear market territory, somethat were not sad about that happening
to Tesla and but that is alsoaffecting a lot of other stocks.
So that's kind of what thatmeans when you hear those words correction
and bear market.
(04:00):
Yeah.
And it's important to rememberthat during the 2018, 2019 China
US trade war that WHOimplemented that the S&P 500 took
had several drops during thattimeframe as well.
But then eventually itrebounded by 28% over by the end
of 2019.
You know, unless you'reretiring next Tuesday, your portfolio
isn't ruined as much as itmight feel like it.
(04:21):
It's just having a bit of amood and I think we all are right
now.
Yeah, exactly.
I think one of the other otherimportant things to remember here
about that is this whole ideais that you're, you're, what you're
experiencing, what the marketis experiencing right now is a lot
of emotion.
And it's not really a goodidea to operate a business based
(04:45):
on emotion.
Right.
I mean that's what really whatyou're, you're doing with your portfolio.
So that brings the question,David, what should we not be doing
right now?
Right.
And so that is we really needto step away from it and say how
do I look at this with abetter perspective.
And probably one of the mostimportant things is to not panic
sell.
When you sell, you lock inyour losses.
(05:07):
Now I'm not saying that youshouldn't sell.
I'm saying don't panic, sell,don't rush out and just sell everything.
It's also important toremember that whether you're two
or three years away fromretirement or 25 years away from
retirement, it's reallyimportant to not stop contributing
to your retirement accounts,whether that's your employer sponsored
(05:28):
retirement account or yourRoth IRA or traditional IRA or Sep
ira if you're self employed,whatever, keep contributing to those.
When I look back to thetimeframes that I think helped us
become retirement accountmillionaires, it really a lot of
it had to do with during 2008and 2009 when the market had tanked
(05:50):
and the economy was in crisis.
John and I had just finishedpaying off our credit card debt and
we had been living a veryfrugal lifestyle.
And instead of inflating ourlife, we just decided to take all
the money that we were sendingto our credit cards and start putting
that into our retirement accounts.
And that really helped usbuild buy when the market was down.
(06:11):
And now 20, 25 years later, ornot 25, 15, 20 years later, we are
looking at a much bettersituation in part because of that.
So it's important to not thinkthat you can be some, you have some
like crystal ball as to what'sgoing on in the market.
I mean, even Wall streetwizards right now are kind of scratching
(06:32):
their heads going, WTF do wedo we do?
Because this is unprecedented time.
So don't try to buy the dip ortime the market.
Timing the market is liketrying to guess who the winner of
Drag Race is from the veryfirst episode.
You know that you're probablygoing to.
Get a wrong, right?
Yeah, it's almost impossible.
And I will share.
See, Kramer just shared onCNBC that, you know, is that nobody
(06:54):
wants to hear this adviceright now with all the emotion and
volatility that we're dealingwith, but it's probably best at this
point to just stick it out.
But that being said, talk withyour financial advisor and they know
your situation a lot morebetter than we do.
This is just broad generaladvice that you're getting from us.
Your financial advisor cangive you specific advice.
So what do you do now?
Right.
What else?
What can you do?
Yeah, so a good thing to doright now is probably you should
(07:17):
be doing have done this anyway.
Now is a good time to reviewyour portfolio and make sure your
asset allocation is lined withwhat your goals and your objectives
are when you're going toretire, all that good stuff.
So are you a little bit tooaggressive now for us?
Couple weeks ago, we were alittle bit too aggressive because
we had a lot of gains fromespecially the tech side of our portfolio.
So fortunately we trimmed someof those gains off and put some of
(07:38):
those into cash.
But you might be a little bittoo conservative right now.
So talk with your financialadvisor to figure out what you need
to do to rebalance your portfolio.
Keep contributing to Your portfolio.
Exactly.
As David said, there's so muchbenefit in dollar cost averaging
and it helps smooth out muchof this volatility over time.
The longer time goes and wedollar cost averaged into the stock
(07:58):
market in 2008, 2009 and thatproved beneficial for us.
But maybe dollar cost averageinto what you need to do to balance
your portfolio rather than notlocking in those losses, as David
said, maybe dollar costaverage into whatever positions you
need to do to put yourportfolio back in line.
And there are three ways thatyou can.
Dollar cost average.
Yeah, there are three ways torebalance your portfolio.
(08:21):
Great.
The first one is to actuallysell those stocks that are dropping
that you probably should havesold a while ago.
But when you sell those andmove them into cash, you are locking
in those losses, which forsome people that may be an appropriate
thing to do right now.
The second way to rebalanceyour portfolio is to sell some of
(08:42):
those stocks that are droppingthat were more aggressive and buy
the more conservative stuffthat you should have been holding
previously, which most likelyis already starting to go up in price
because people are doing thatright now.
And the third is, as Johnmentioned, dollar cost averaging
into those conservative positions.
When you do that, you're goingto automatically swing your portfolio
(09:05):
in a slow manner towards whereit should actually be.
And that really is this is,this may be the time to log into
your 401k account and say,okay, I'm going to stop investing
in the S&P 500 and I'm goingto move to a bond portfolio or ETF
or something like that.
So think about moving fromthose more conservative or more aggressive
(09:26):
positions, your equitypositions, international equity positions,
small cap positions, and movethat in over into something like
a bond portfolio, moneymarkets if necessary, if you have
a short time period.
But all of that really willhelp you rebalance your portfolio
in a less emotional manner.
Exactly.
And if you're feeling veryanxious, one thing that you can do
(09:49):
to offset some of that anxietyis to make sure you're flooding your
emergency savings account withmore cash.
And if and 100% yourportfolio, I'm sorry, your emergency
savings should be in a highyield savings account of some sort.
So you're getting better thanstandard broad market interest rates.
Yeah.
So remember that volatility is scary.
I mean that's why it's volatile.
(10:09):
Right.
That's the whole, what thewhole purpose of the word is it's
actually brings about fear.
And that is something that canhave an impact on your feeling towards
your future.
But retirement isn't aboutreacting to headlines.
It's about building a planthat works through this kind of chaos.
So keep going.
You've got this.
Keep building that portfolio.
And remember to, like, shareand download and.
(10:31):
Or subscribe wherever you'recatching us.
Thank you for joining us foranother episode of Queer Money.
And until next time, stay fabulous.
So picture it.
You're at the gala event ofthe year.
You walk into the room, youstare across, and you see your ex
wearing the exact same outfityou're wearing.
What do you do?
You probably freak out and runout of the room.
(00:36):
Right.
At least that's probably theway most people are feeling right
now when it comes to lookingat what's going on in the stock market.
Yeah.
Trump's tariffs are rockingthe stock market like nobody's business.
And if you've looked at your401k or your retirement accounts
recently, your stomach hasprobably dropped a bit.
And if it has, you're not alone.
But before you panic and go,start selling your portfolio or going
(00:58):
into all cash, when QueerMoney Episode number 485, we're breaking
down what's happening and whatit means for your retirement plan.
So, David, WTF is going on?
Yeah, really?
What, what, what WTF is?
Well, that messy X of is 45has shown up.
Yeah.
And is cause wreaking havoc.
(01:20):
Trump is implementing, orwants to implement some tariffs like
it's the 1930s, apparently,back when America was great.
The last time.
You remember the great.
The great what?
The Great Depression.
Right.
So because of this, investorsare freaking out.
Markets don't like shocks like this.
(01:44):
They don't likeunpredictability, they don't like
chaos.
And that's exactly what we'reseeing, especially when that chaos
comes from outside the market.
This is coming from basicallythe political arena, the geopolitical
arena, and this is basicallyfreaking out most investors.
(02:17):
Yeah.
Who would have thought thatTrump would have brought chaos to
our lives?
Jeez.
Exactly.
Fool me once.
Right?
Right.
What I think is so interestingis I feel like he has conditioned
his followers to be so strongin their xenophobia that they're
so willing to.
They're willing to cut offtheir hand in the sheer opportunity
(02:38):
of being able to cut offanother country's pinky.
Right.
Like they're really tosacrifice themselves just so it makes
another country hurt just alittle bit.
So what does this mean foryour 401k or your retirement accounts?
Well, they've probably taken a dip.
I mean, I know the last timewe looked at our portfolio last week,
we were already down about 200,000.
And I haven't calculated,obviously, what we've.
(02:59):
What we've lost today.
But it's important to rememberthat dips don't necessarily mean
disasters.
Market volatility happens allthe time.
We were actually, quitehonestly, we were due for a correction
anyway.
I know that we're probably inbear market territory at this point,
but that should some offsetsome of the anxiety.
And historically tradetensions and market downturns have
always had been followed up bya rebound.
Right.
(03:19):
Long, long term investors,especially those who are 45 and older,
we still have some time torecover from, from this if things
don't get too chaotic, atleast at this point and grow some
wealth.
Yeah, I'll just throw in alittle couple of definitions to what
you just said, John.
A correction is when the, astock or the market itself is down
10% from its previous high.
(03:40):
A bear market is when it'sdown that stock or the market is
down 20%.
So, so there are plenty ofstocks that have crept into that
bear market territory, somethat were not sad about that happening
to Tesla and but that is alsoaffecting a lot of other stocks.
So that's kind of what thatmeans when you hear those words correction
and bear market.
(04:00):
Yeah.
And it's important to rememberthat during the 2018, 2019 China
US trade war that WHOimplemented that the S&P 500 took
had several drops during thattimeframe as well.
But then eventually itrebounded by 28% over by the end
of 2019.
You know, unless you'reretiring next Tuesday, your portfolio
isn't ruined as much as itmight feel like it.
(04:21):
It's just having a bit of amood and I think we all are right
now.
Yeah, exactly.
I think one of the other otherimportant things to remember here
about that is this whole ideais that you're, you're, what you're
experiencing, what the marketis experiencing right now is a lot
of emotion.
And it's not really a goodidea to operate a business based
(04:45):
on emotion.
Right.
I mean that's what really whatyou're, you're doing with your portfolio.
So that brings the question,David, what should we not be doing
right now?
Right.
And so that is we really needto step away from it and say how
do I look at this with abetter perspective.
And probably one of the mostimportant things is to not panic
sell.
When you sell, you lock inyour losses.
(05:07):
Now I'm not saying that youshouldn't sell.
I'm saying don't panic, sell,don't rush out and just sell everything.
It's also important toremember that whether you're two
or three years away fromretirement or 25 years away from
retirement, it's reallyimportant to not stop contributing
to your retirement accounts,whether that's your employer sponsored
(05:28):
retirement account or yourRoth IRA or traditional IRA or Sep
ira if you're self employed,whatever, keep contributing to those.
When I look back to thetimeframes that I think helped us
become retirement accountmillionaires, it really a lot of
it had to do with during 2008and 2009 when the market had tanked
(05:50):
and the economy was in crisis.
John and I had just finishedpaying off our credit card debt and
we had been living a veryfrugal lifestyle.
And instead of inflating ourlife, we just decided to take all
the money that we were sendingto our credit cards and start putting
that into our retirement accounts.
And that really helped usbuild buy when the market was down.
(06:11):
And now 20, 25 years later, ornot 25, 15, 20 years later, we are
looking at a much bettersituation in part because of that.
So it's important to not thinkthat you can be some, you have some
like crystal ball as to what'sgoing on in the market.
I mean, even Wall streetwizards right now are kind of scratching
(06:32):
their heads going, WTF do wedo we do?
Because this is unprecedented time.
So don't try to buy the dip ortime the market.
Timing the market is liketrying to guess who the winner of
Drag Race is from the veryfirst episode.
You know that you're probablygoing to.
Get a wrong, right?
Yeah, it's almost impossible.
And I will share.
See, Kramer just shared onCNBC that, you know, is that nobody
(06:54):
wants to hear this adviceright now with all the emotion and
volatility that we're dealingwith, but it's probably best at this
point to just stick it out.
But that being said, talk withyour financial advisor and they know
your situation a lot morebetter than we do.
This is just broad generaladvice that you're getting from us.
Your financial advisor cangive you specific advice.
So what do you do now?
Right.
What else?
What can you do?
Yeah, so a good thing to doright now is probably you should
(07:17):
be doing have done this anyway.
Now is a good time to reviewyour portfolio and make sure your
asset allocation is lined withwhat your goals and your objectives
are when you're going toretire, all that good stuff.
So are you a little bit tooaggressive now for us?
Couple weeks ago, we were alittle bit too aggressive because
we had a lot of gains fromespecially the tech side of our portfolio.
So fortunately we trimmed someof those gains off and put some of
(07:38):
those into cash.
But you might be a little bittoo conservative right now.
So talk with your financialadvisor to figure out what you need
to do to rebalance your portfolio.
Keep contributing to Your portfolio.
Exactly.
As David said, there's so muchbenefit in dollar cost averaging
and it helps smooth out muchof this volatility over time.
The longer time goes and wedollar cost averaged into the stock
(07:58):
market in 2008, 2009 and thatproved beneficial for us.
But maybe dollar cost averageinto what you need to do to balance
your portfolio rather than notlocking in those losses, as David
said, maybe dollar costaverage into whatever positions you
need to do to put yourportfolio back in line.
And there are three ways thatyou can.
Dollar cost average.
Yeah, there are three ways torebalance your portfolio.
(08:21):
Great.
The first one is to actuallysell those stocks that are dropping
that you probably should havesold a while ago.
But when you sell those andmove them into cash, you are locking
in those losses, which forsome people that may be an appropriate
thing to do right now.
The second way to rebalanceyour portfolio is to sell some of
(08:42):
those stocks that are droppingthat were more aggressive and buy
the more conservative stuffthat you should have been holding
previously, which most likelyis already starting to go up in price
because people are doing thatright now.
And the third is, as Johnmentioned, dollar cost averaging
into those conservative positions.
When you do that, you're goingto automatically swing your portfolio
(09:05):
in a slow manner towards whereit should actually be.
And that really is this is,this may be the time to log into
your 401k account and say,okay, I'm going to stop investing
in the S&P 500 and I'm goingto move to a bond portfolio or ETF
or something like that.
So think about moving fromthose more conservative or more aggressive
(09:26):
positions, your equitypositions, international equity positions,
small cap positions, and movethat in over into something like
a bond portfolio, moneymarkets if necessary, if you have
a short time period.
But all of that really willhelp you rebalance your portfolio
in a less emotional manner.
Exactly.
And if you're feeling veryanxious, one thing that you can do
(09:49):
to offset some of that anxietyis to make sure you're flooding your
emergency savings account withmore cash.
And if and 100% yourportfolio, I'm sorry, your emergency
savings should be in a highyield savings account of some sort.
So you're getting better thanstandard broad market interest rates.
Yeah.
So remember that volatility is scary.
I mean that's why it's volatile.
(10:09):
Right.
That's the whole, what thewhole purpose of the word is it's
actually brings about fear.
And that is something that canhave an impact on your feeling towards
your future.
But retirement isn't aboutreacting to headlines.
It's about building a planthat works through this kind of chaos.
So keep going.
You've got this.
Keep building that portfolio.
And remember to, like, shareand download and.
(10:31):
Or subscribe wherever you'recatching us.
Thank you for joining us foranother episode of Queer Money.
And until next time, stay fabulous.
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