Surviving A Recession And Prospering
If you are prepared for a recession then the you should be able to prosper during the recession. Being able to prosper during a recession is where you want to be financially. In my lifetime there have been five recessions; 1973, 1980, 1990, 2001, and 2008. Of the first four how often did you wish you had been in a position to take advantage of cheaper real estate or cheap stocks. If you were old enough to have understood the opportunities, and I guess cared, then you remember thinking about wanting to have been in a position to take advantage of the financial opportunities that a recession can bring. Most recessions in modern history have been very short only lasting a year or two. But, before the 1960s recessions usually lasted for at least five years. Can you imagine an economy so bad that it takes five years for it to recover. The longest recession in U.S. history lasted for twenty-three years. The point is that if you prepare for a recession you can prosper during a recession. many people who are wealthy today became rich because they were in the right place at the right time, and they were prepared.
Developing a plan and implementing a budget is not enough. To take advantage and prosper during a recession you have to be aware of the financial opportunities when they are available. You have to understand what makes a decent buy in the stock market. You have to put yourself in the financial position to take advantage of the opportunities as they come your way. Surviving a recession is tough if you loose your job. But, if you do not loose your job, and / or are able to develop multiple streams of income there is no reason that you should not be able to prosper during a recession, as long as you make a sufficient income and keep your expenses down, you should be primed to take advantage of the unstable economy.
Preparing for a recession requires that you implement fiscal restraints on how you spend your money. So, don’t let greed get the best of you and invest too much of your money. If you do you will put yourself in a bad financial position. If you do go over board and give in, the first time an investment goes bad you will be in the same dire financial straights as every one else. Keep those fiscal restraints in place and only make an investment when it will not put you in financial jeopardy. Investing during bad economic times should be taken from the perspective that you should be willing to loose all of the money you invested. If this loss would affect your ability in survive a recession then you should not make the investment.
Look at prospering in a recession like surviving a recession on steroids. If the investments that are available to you at the time do not fit into your current strategy then do not get involved with that investment. Surviving the recession must be your primary focus never loose track of that. If you over extend yourself you will fall victim to the very thing that you have been trying to avoid. That does not mean you should fear making investments, it just means that you should not take too many risks and do not take risks with money you may need. Money you may need to survive. No investment is worth the possibility of loosing everything. Be prepared for the recession and you will be in a great position to prosper in the recession.

There are a lot of opportunities in a recession and not all of them require a lot of money either!
An example:
Our furniture was in good structural shape but was getting pretty old and worn, we had even considered replacing it, but didn’t want to spend a bunch of money when times were tough and were headed in the direction of getting even tougher. We felt it would be better (read safer) to have the money in the bank “in case”, than to have new furniture. So we looked around for alternatives. When Linens-n-things went out of business in our area we were able to swoop in and get a killer deal (75% off) on a very nice set of slipcovers. Now our furniture looks brand new and the total cost was about $150 instead of over $1200.
So even if you don’t have a ton of money, look for those opportunities!