Anxious about the state of... everything? Here's how to manage your money through the chaos.

Thu, Mar 6, 2025, 8:07 AM 7 min read

February wasn’t the kindest period for status savers.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) fell astir 4%. The S&P 500 (^GSPC) and the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) dropped astir 1.5%.

Amid each that marketplace turmoil, 401(k) participants hustled to safety, fleeing from equity funds to fixed-income investments, according to a caller study that tracks the inflow and outflow from 401(k) program relationship holdings. For astir fractional of the month’s trading days, trading enactment was supra normal, according to the Alight Solutions 401(k) Index.

People pulled 401(k) wealth from institution stock, ample US equity funds, and target-date funds and shifted to unchangeable value, bond, and wealth marketplace funds.

“These are historically little risky than equity funds,” Rob Austin, caput of thought enactment astatine Alight Solutions, told Yahoo Finance. “So the determination to them could awesome that radical are preferring to person little volatility successful their portfolios.”

Lower volatility? As if.

Millions of workers are edgy astir losing their jobs oregon are already dealing with a layoff. There are percolating worries implicit economical maturation hitting the brakes, tariffs connected Canada, Mexico, and China ratcheting up inflation, a informing astir "World War III" to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky successful an aggravated Oval Office meeting.

The erstwhile caput of the Social Security Administration is cautioning that the bureau could beryllium astatine hazard of missing payments to seniors for the archetypal clip successful its past acknowledgment to the monolithic staffing cuts planned by the Trump administration. And deeper concerns astir the aboriginal of Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid benefits are ominously hovering.

Meanwhile, consumer assurance sank successful February, the biggest monthly diminution successful much than 4 years.

Life is coming astatine america fast, and, if you’re similar me, you’re anxious.

I asked respective fiscal advisers what they’re telling their clients astir managing their wealth successful these uncertain times.

Read more: What is simply a fiscal adviser, and what bash they do?

“Market swings are normal, but they don’t ever spell trouble,” Lisa A.K. Kirchenbauer, elder advisor and laminitis of Omega Wealth Management successful Arlington, Va., told Yahoo Finance.

“While overmuch is inactive yet to beryllium played out, the uncertainty and discomfort is growing,” she said. “Depending connected wherever you are successful life: working, pre-retirement, retiring, oregon retired for a while, these imaginable shifts are raising a fig of short- and semipermanent questions.”

The astir important question we tin ask, Kirchenbauer said, is: "What are you astir acrophobic about?"