You'd be crazy not to be nervous about it from what I've heard, seen and read in the last 6 months.
Except they've been saying that for the last 2-3 years.
I have lunch with a friend every 2-3 weeks, and he self-manages his retirement, and he's retired. It was ~2.5 years ago that he said "A lot of the financial news guys I follow say there's going to be a crash in the next 3-6 months."
At every lunch we've been following up on that, and it just hasn't crashed yet.
I'm not saying it won't, I'm not saying it's risky, but just getting out of the market is not an ideal solution either.
Simple example but real. Parmesan cheese. It was just a staple for me, I'd use it like water, now I literally think twice when making pasta because it's so cost prohibitive to use.
So your friends finances may not have "crashed" but he will be much much worse off then he retires and I doubt his wealth has really gained much of anything in the last few years either.
He has probably gained around 5x in the last 2-3 years. He is heavily into bitcoin. I've gained 3x in the last 2 years and 4x in the last 3 years largely in the stock market.
Not saying you're wrong. In Colorado USA the middle class income range is $62-186K, which is a pretty huge range.
I guess you’re “making more money”, but you’re going to be paying a lot more for everything too?
I tend to agree a big crash is in the cards, but as they say, the market can be irrational for a very long time. The "irrational exhuberance" speech was in 1996 but the market rallied hard for many years after that until the eventual inevitable crash. If you sold in 1996 you messed up real bad.