Our mortgage eats one full paycheck and our portfolio’s sinking – how are others handling this market?

Ever since tariff policies were announced in early April, the stock market has been going wild. Many people’s portfolios are down year to date, and it’s making a lot of investors anxious.

In this Reddit post, we have a concerned investor who’s worried because their net worth just declined by $1 million. Part of the problem is that they’re on the hook for payments on a $2 million house. So there’s not a lot of wiggle room in their budget to compensate for a down portfolio by boosting savings.

The reality is that a market downturn can be nerve-wracking. But unless you’re on the cusp of retirement, it may not be something you have to worry about so much.

Don’t panic every time your investments take a dive

In the course of your investing career, the value of your portfolio is likely to fluctuate — for better or worse. And generally speaking, you should know that unless you’re truly on the verge of retirement, a market downturn isn’t necessarily something to worry about.

It’s one thing if your portfolio loses a lot of its value three months before your retirement date. But if you’re 10 years away from retirement, there’s lots of time for your investments to recover lost value. If you’re 20 years away, there’s even more time.

So unless you’re retiring this year, what you may want to do now is sit back and ride out the storm. If you sell investments at a loss out of panic, you could set yourself back in the long term.

Make sure your portfolio is balanced

While now’s not the time to sell investments because of stress, it is a good time to do a portfolio checkup and make sure you’re not too heavily invested in one segment of the market or one specific company.

Granted, a good time to rebalance a portfolio is usually when the market is up — not when it’s down. But if you have too much money in any given stock or market segment, that’s the one situation where it could pay to make a move. Otherwise, you may want to leave your portfolio alone and wait things out.

Another thing to do is make sure your mortgage isn’t eating up too much of your income. Of course, if you just bought your home and that is the case, there’s not too much to do about it. But you may want to look at your portfolio, identify assets that haven’t lost value, and free up some cash, just in case you need it for your home (for example, to cover surprise repairs).

Another good bet is to try to find yourself a financial advisor you can work with to meet your long-term savings goals. The nice thing about working with an advisor is that they understand how the market works and how to handle declines. An advisor could probably put your mind at ease better than venting on a forum like Reddit (not that there’s anything wrong with that).

Just as importantly, an advisor can make sure whatever portfolio you have is balanced. And they’ll be there so you can bounce major financial decisions off of them, like buying a home.