We keep waiting for things to settle down.
The prices. The layoffs. The news that feels like it can’t possibly be real.
I understand that impulse. I did the same thing before my bankruptcy. Told myself it would stabilize. That I just needed to get through the next few months.
It didn’t stabilize. And waiting cost me options I couldn’t get back.
Timothy Snyder — Yale historian, author of “On Tyranny” — has been saying something that I think everyone needs to hear right now: what we’re experiencing is not an accident. Autocracy brings poverty as a feature, not a bug. The powerful consolidate. Regular people absorb the cost.
That’s not alarmist. That’s history. And Snyder has studied enough of it to know the pattern.
What I know from my own experience is this: the people who came through financial collapse were not the ones who saw it coming. They were the ones who stopped waiting for someone else to fix it.
You don’t have to have all the answers. You just have to stop pretending this is temporary.
Start with your numbers. Know your runway. Cut what isn’t essential while you still have the option to choose.
That’s not panic. That’s preparation.
Watch Snyder’s latest conversation here.
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