Novice, I am not recession-proof myself, so I’m not really an expert on this, but I’ve though about it, so I’ll pass on my thoughts to you.
LIQUIDITY
In a recession, the prices of many assets tends to drop a lot. An example is stocks. Real estate tends to get hit by recession as well. Commodities too. People argue over what’s affected most and least. Obviously, money in the bank isn’t affected (except eventually by inflation). Anyway, if you have to sell those assets during the recession, you’ll lose a lot. So make sure that you don’t have to sell many of them. Most people do that by building a reserve fund in “liquid” assets like bank deposits that will cover their bills even if they lose their jobs, until they find a new job. Having two jobs, as you do, especially in different fields and industries, really helps a lot. Nursing is probably one of the safest occupations – we’re not going to allow people to die in a recession, they’ll just have to cut back on buying big new TVs.
DIVERSIFICATION
What else can you do besides avoiding forced liquidation of assets during the recession? Well, you can try to make sure that the future total value of your assets isn’t permanently impaired by the recession. After all, recessions do end, and you want the assets to be worth something then. That might not happen if you invested all your savings into one asset that got wiped out by the recession, like the stock of a company that goes bankrupt. So it’s a good idea to spread your savings over assets that are very different from each other. Then lots has to go wrong before you lose a big chunk the total value of your assets. I invest in a wide variety of stocks, spread fairly evenly over the world and many industries, including real estate. You have an investment in your home already, so you probably don’t need any more real estate assets. if you don’t want to research global stock markets, then you can buy a mutual fund that invests in a very broad worldwide basket of stocks. (Vanguard, Fidelity, Barclays, and many others are offered. Investment advisers can tell you more.)
If you do buy a global mutual fund, then you may want to do it in disciplined pre-planned fixed amounts per month over the next 2-5 years. That way you won’t kick yoursself if you buy all at once now and it turns out that was the market peak over the next 15 years.
INCOME
I am a 1-income household, working in private industry with no pension benefits, and over half my compensation is highly variable. Obviously, I am taking on high income risk. You are a 2-income household, at least one of you is in a very stable profession with good pension benefits, and most of your compensation is fixed in advance and doesn’t go up or down much. You’ve probably done as much as you need to reduce risk here.
