It feels like we’ve been headed in the direction of a recession for the last 5 years, but in the last few weeks with all of our national indexes plummeting (pulled down by Tesla plummeting 🩷) and with Trump’s tariff plan, the market feels more uncertain by the day. It’s starting to feel closer to a recession than ever. But what are we supposed to do if we’re headed into a recession? Are we supposed to prepare somehow?

I know that the most common initial feeling is panic, but please do not panic. Panic is always going to make things worse. I’m not sure if this downward trend will stick around long enough to actually be called a “recession”, but if you pay attention to the people you can see the signs long before the powers that be decide we’ve officially entered a recession.

Consumer Recession & Corporate Advice

You and I have already been feeling it for, honestly, years. The job market has been horrible for years, the interest rates on your savings accounts have been going down, the price of everything has been going up, people are having to have multiple jobs or gigs just to keep up with rent. These are things we’ve been seeing for years, the effects are just finally hitting the GDP at large.

If you look up how to prepare for a recession, you’ll get a lot of people telling you to work on your emergency fund. Or people telling you to keep your credit score high and reduce high interest debt. These people and corporations always seem to speak from the perspective of someone who has money and needs to protect their assets. But what about the vast majority of us who cannot simply “bolster our emergency fund” when times are uncertain? The people who just don’t have 401ks or Roth IRAs? Or if they do they’re very minimal? The people who can’t exactly “buckle up their portfolio”? Especially since recessions always end up hitting marginalized folks the most, especially people of the global majority.

Let’s talk about it, and I hope that you’re able to take comfort in the fact that the plan is and always has been the same. In fact, a lot of this goes hand in hand with turning these anti-Trump boycotts into a lifestyle change (which I wrote about in my newsletter. Come join me there!).

Change your focus to your neighbors

The advice from financial institutions is rooted in making smart investments and protecting your debt score, but ultimately the hardships that come from a recession come from our forced dependency on this very system. We’re dependent on money to keep ourselves housed, fed, and clothed. And then dependent on selling our time to get that money in the form on a job. When we’re forced into this system for every single thing, that means that when the economy hurts, we hurt. So building support systems outside of the system can help.

That being said, we’re not advocating to detach yourself from the system entirely. Not only is that nearly impossible to do, there are benefits to living together in a society and in community. In fact, living together in community is exactly how can protect ourselves during a recession. Lessening our individual burden by sharing them with others lifts everyone’s burden, collectively. Our advice to prepare for a recession will always begin and end with the same first step as everything else: Introduce yourself to your neighbors.

5 Tangible Steps to Getting Through a Recession with Your Community

Once you achieve the first step of introducing yourself to your neighbors and you start getting to know them, a lot of doors begin to open to you. Our individual burdens become so much lighter when they’re shared. People talk about connections and friendships in terms of emotional wellbeing, but it’s less frequently spoken about in regards to physical wellbeing as well. You might be surprised that the best way to save time and money on others, but it truly and genuinely does come back to you.

Here are some things you can do with your neighbors to lighten each other’s burdens:

1. Start a Bulk Buying Group

What is a bulk buying group? A group of people who agree to buy items in bulk and share the cost and quantity of the purchase. This can start with you finding an item and you and your neighbors all use, and proposing to split to help you all save money. There’s many ways start a bulk buying group and you may need to figure out how it works best for you and your neighbors, but ultimately, it’s just about buying and sharing together.

It’s expensive to buy everything individually, but it’s not always feasible to buy things in bulk for your household. Surely it’s cheaper per unit to buy the 5-dozen pack of eggs from Costco than 5 individual dozens, but perishable food may spoil before you can use it all. It’s definitely cheaper per unit to buy toilet paper in a big pack, but you may not have enough space to store that much toilet paper at a time.

But if there are things that both you and your neighbor will use (more than likely you both need toilet paper), then buying in bulk and splitting it could allow you to take advantage of the bulk per unit price. Everyone will save money, all while not buying more than you need. The added bonus is that buying in bulk often uses less packaging too, so this is also good for reducing our waste.

Here are some ideas for things to buy in bulk to split:

2. Start Cooking for Each Other

Another way to prepare for a recession, similar to starting a bulk buying group, figuring out how you can coordinate meals with your neighbors can also help. Cooking for each other gives us more flexibility in saving both time and money, as well as balancing the two. If you or your neighbor need to pick up a second job, saving time can be invaluable. That’s why so many people have flocked to pre-made meals over recent years. The convenience is hard to pass up.

Plus, it’s far easier to cook a little bit more of one meal than it is to cook two entirely different meals. It can even be cheaper because it may allow you to buy more things in bulk or use an entire onion rather than half, leaving the other half to go bad. It could also make your time cooking feel more worth it to cook a bigger batch. For example, the cost savings of cooking dry beans for one not feel like it’s worth the time cost for half a cup of beans, but cooking 2 cups of dry beans for you and a few of your neighbors may be a different story.

Additional Benefits of Cooking for Each Other

Sharing food with one another comes with a myriad of additional benefits as well, not just the financial help during a recession. Trusting each other with our nourishment brings us closer together even if you don’t physically sit down over the meal to eat together. You begin to see each other as whole human beings rather than just the person whose footsteps you hear above your head at night. Making food for one another is an intimate relationship building activity, which will only encourage building power, an important part of movement building.

We’re so time-poor in the USA, and a recession only makes it worse. We’re all working more than we should and many of us are also pouring into secondary income streams. It often feels like we come home and have to cook and the entire day is already gone. It hardly adds any cooking time to double a recipe, but it’s always multiplies the time to cook another meal. Imagine how much time you would save if both you and a neighbor each were to cook for each other once a week. Each of you will have to cook one less meal a week. How much time would you save if you rotated with 3 neighbors? Each of you would cook 2 fewer meals a week.

How much time would you save cooking one or two fewer meals a week? How much less tempted would you be to eat out? And how much would you save from not eating out?

3. Lend and Borrow Things with Your Neighbors

I think about this one every time I use something in my apartment that doesn’t get used very often. Likely, every person in your neighborhood doesn’t need to have their own lawn mower if you’re all willing to share one. How frequently are you really actively using your lawn mower? Realistically, most people’s lawn mowers are sitting gathering dust the majority of the time.

Stay with me here, I know a lot of people may be thinking, “what if they lose my stuff?” or “what if my things get damaged?” This task is not only about saving money, though it will save all of you a ton of money, but it’s also about building trust and community. Get together and draft up an agreement with your neighbors to make sure it’s charged or full of gas, and start sharing. Functionally, consider how the library lends out books and other items and figure out your own adaptation. If you build a culture of care in your neighborhood and begin sharing, you can stop relying on individual purchases as much.

Start questioning the appliances and household items that you have that sit unused most of the time. Does everyone in your neighborhood need their own toolkit if none of you use them for more than the occasional repair? Does everyone need their own sewing kit if you only sew to mend the occasional clothing item? How much use does your washing machine really get? Once a week? Twice? What about your vacuum? Your book or movie collection? Your exercise equipment? Each item you consistently share with a neighbor or two cuts the cost of the item in half or more.

How much money would your neighborhood collectively save if we didn’t each have to buy every single thing ourselves? How much more space would we have in our homes?

4. Lean Into Your Skills & Share Your Knowledge

A lot of the money that we spend is spent on convenience. I mentioned earlier that we’re very time-poor in the US, which is why we’re so inclined to buy things for convenience. But when money gets tight, one of the quickest things that has to go is convenience buying. Instead, when times are tough, we often have to lean into taking more time to learn certain skills so that we can spend less money. Luckily, some of the most useful skills to save money are also fulfilling hobbies, and everyone has something they’re able to contribute.

Your crochet hobby can be used to make a blanket for the new baby next door or scarves for the kids down the street. Their embroidery hobby can help mend clothes for the entire neighborhood. The guy two doors down who has a flourishing vegetable garden probably could never eat all those cucumbers. The woman on the corner who’s really into DIY could probably make raised garden beds in record time. Everyone has something to contribute.

Additionally, slow hobbies help you build patience. In a world where everything has express shipping and we can stream whatever we want with the click of a button, it’s easy to start thinking that the revolution should be happening faster than it is. But slow hobbies remind us that building something better takes time, commitment, patience, and a whole lot of love. They remind us that setbacks don’t mean a ruined project. They remind us that building things from scratch is never perfect, but we can reach the finish line together.

Side note: I’m inspired to create more on this particular topic. Perhaps you’ll see a video about this soon, or maybe by the time you read this there will already be an accompanying video.

5. Opt for One Time Purchases & Physical Media

Buying more things is a little counterintuitive, but there’s no world where we will be able to stop buying things all together, no matter how much money we’re trying to save. So when you do have the ability, be smarter with your purchases. Don’t start buying a ton, but begin thinking critically about making your money out be worth more to you personally.

Keep a look out for options that allow a one-time purchase rather than a subscription based model. Opt for the one-time purchase as often as you can. But be smart about it! Sometimes it doesn’t actually make sense! Find the balance for what works for you. For example, a gym membership will never amount to the real cost of building an entire home gym. But if you only go to the gym for a couple sets of weights that you could grab off Facebook Marketplace, maybe the membership really isn’t worth it.

Relatedly, start buying your favorite media in physical versions. That doesn’t mean you should go out and buy all your favorite movies at once, but if you come across it on sale and have a little extra to spend that day, maybe decide to pick it up. Are you holding onto a streaming service subscription because it’s the only one that has your favorite movie? Your favorite album?

Switch it up and get yourself an MP3 player and download the audio off YouTube videos. Bonus, if the streaming service decides to get rid of it one day, you’ll still have a copy.

(Honorary Mention) Reuse and Repurpose, Literally Anything

Reusing and repurposing gets an honorary mention here, because it’s a bit more obvious and may not need explaining. But giving any item even just one single more use than expected can really make a big difference over time. Or repurposing an old item into something else can save you from having to buy a brand new thing.

Could you consider wrapping gifts in paper bags from the grocery store? Maybe using an painted shoebox to store your seeds or trinkets? Can your pasta sauce jar be a new cup? Could you just wash that to-go cup and use it one or two more times to save wear on your other cups? Incredibly recession-core a-la-2008, but start crafting with random stuff again. Turn alcohol bottles into flower vases or get back into friendship bracelets with that string that’s been sitting in your closet for 15 years.

Flex your creativity and force yourself to think about what else could accomplish your goal without purchasing something. Or think about using something a second time just to keep you busy for a bit. Though it may only be $5 from Amazon, how many “it’s only $5 from Amazon” moments before your money could’ve been used better elsewhere? How much less would you be tempted to have a night on the town if you found a nice reuse/repurpose DIY to keep you busy?

Nothing is too Small

I know that saving a dollar or two doesn’t usually feel like it’s worth the loss of convenience. But when we do it in many aspects of our lives for an extended period of time, it can really add up. If you make 5 decisions a day to save a dollar, that’s $5 a day. These small efforts compound over time and can help lift the weight off everyone’s shoulders.

The best part about these strategies is that they are not only tied with a dollar amount. Engaging with your community in these types of ways are also building a safety net for yourself and your neighbors. Many of us wouldn’t allow our friends to go hungry if they were unable to afford food. Building relationships in your community means that more people will be willing to help keep you fed. Throwing a rent party for your neighbor means that your neighbors are more likely to throw a rent party for you if you ever need it. These relationships may seem intangible compared to money, but they’re essential and lifesaving.

Saving Money and Over Consumption

At some points in writing this I felt like I was simply writing thoughts on how to shift your lifestyle toward under consumption, so I felt like it would be wrong to not bring it up. Our spending habits in the US are intricately linked with over consumption, which means that our money saving tips are often very intricately linked with under consumption too.

Capitalism’s “growth at all costs” mentality promotes constant rewards for consumption that ultimately affect our health and our environment. In order for companies to continue to grow, they have to continue to sell more and more products. But to do that, they have spent years of time and money to convince us to consume more in general, so their market reach can increase.

The kind of growth that Capitalism demands is unsustainable and at a certain point the bubble will burst. It’s ultimately up to us, collectively, to decide whether we get to choose to deflate the bubble on our own or whether the bubble will burst and we’re forced into change. But for now, yes, preparing for a recession looks a lot like choosing to deflate the bubble before it bursts.