Layoffs, Inflation, and Your Debt: How to Protect and Grow Your Money

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This is my weekly Friday update, recorded January 17, 2025. Layoffs were in the news, inflation still wasn't back to normal, and rates on credit cards and mortgages weren't dropping much either. So I walked through the numbers I track every week and showed what holding cash did compared to holding assets over the prior year.

I'm not a financial advisor and this isn't financial advice. I'm just showing you what I look at and what I do.

What you'll learn

• Why an emergency fund comes before anything else when layoffs are in the news
• What forecasters were saying about 2025 credit card, mortgage, car and savings rates
• What $10,000 in cash returned versus $10,000 spread across assets over about a year
• The seven things I track every Friday, and why I use ETFs for most of them
• What the 10-year/2-year Treasury inversion chart has looked like before past recessions

Why I do this every Friday

Most of my channel is about getting out of debt. But paying down debt and never building anything is spinning in a rat wheel. So every Friday I track the same numbers over time so you can see, week by week, how different places to park money are actually doing.

The dollar loses value, and inflation hasn't gone away

I show the same two charts almost every week. The first is the purchasing power of the dollar, which has fallen over time. Ten dollars ten years ago bought a lot more than ten dollars today. The second is inflation. In 2021, 2022 and 2023 inflation ran above 4% and peaked around 9%. It came down, but it didn't disappear. December's reading was 2.9%, and another site I checked said 3.1%. Unless inflation goes to zero, prices don't come back down. We just sit around hoping wages catch up. That stinks.

Layoffs and what 2025 looked like

I searched layoffs in Google news before recording, and there were a lot of them. If you've lost your job, or a family member did, or you were a two-income household and you're down to one, I'm sorry. It's horrible, and it may go on for a while. That's why my first links are always to emergency fund videos — cash you can reach when something unexpected hits, whether that's a job loss, an air conditioner, or new tires.

CNBC had a piece on where rates might go. Credit cards might fall to 20% when they're around 22% to 24% now. Mortgages might hit 6.5% when they're around 7% to 7.5%. High-yield savings maybe 4%, car loans maybe 7%. None of that is a big deal for someone paying off debt. So the picture was: more layoffs possible, slow economy possible, and debt costs not dropping much.

Cash versus assets: the actual numbers

I started this spreadsheet in February 2024. The top three rows are cash: savings, a 3-month CD, and a 3-month Treasury. Put in $10,000 and you'd have ended with about $10,200 — a $200 profit. Rows 7 through 12 are the assets I track. That same $10,000 would have ended around $14,195, a profit of roughly $4,195. That's a big difference.

Current cash yields when I recorded: savings around 0.42%, 3-month CD around 1.5%, 3-month Treasury 4.58%. With inflation near 3% and taxes on top, cash is barely holding even.

What I track and why

Gold, silver, Bitcoin, Ethereum, the Dow and the S&P 500. Gold was 2755 versus 2050 a year earlier. Silver 3120 versus 2288. Bitcoin over $105,000 versus $43,000. Ethereum 3431 versus 2299. The Dow went from 38,654 to 43,620, and the S&P from 4,958 to about 6,100. I use these because you can buy ETFs for all of them from a normal brokerage account — you don't have to store physical gold or figure out a crypto wallet, and you can sell back to cash easily. If you don't like crypto, skip it and watch the rest. Past performance is not indicative of future performance; these can go down.

The indicators I watch

Inflation about the same year over year. Unemployment up from 3.9% to 4.1% — that sounds small but it's a lot of jobs. The 2-year Treasury at 4.27% and the 10-year at 4.61%. I always look at the inversion chart: in a healthy economy, locking money up for 10 years should pay more than 2 years. It was inverted for a while. Historically, the curve inverted right before the internet bubble, 2008 and other rough stretches. It's uninverted now, which is good, but it's worth watching.

Key steps

1. Build the emergency fund first — cash you can get to if income stops.
2. Assume debt rates stay high; don't wait for rates to rescue your payoff plan.
3. Know what your cash is actually earning after inflation and taxes.
4. If you invest, use simple ETFs you can sell back to cash quickly, and diversify.
5. Track the same numbers on a schedule so you can see trends instead of headlines.

FAQ

Should I pay off debt or invest when layoffs are in the news?

Cash you can reach comes first, because a layoff turns every debt payment into a problem. After that it's a math question: compare your interest rate to what your money would realistically earn. Our guide on paying off debt or investing first and the investment interest calculator walk through it.

Why not just leave extra money in savings?

Savings was paying around 0.42% at the time I recorded, a 3-month CD about 1.5%, and a 3-month Treasury 4.58%, with inflation near 3%. After taxes, cash barely keeps up. That's the reason I track other assets — not because cash is bad, but because it shouldn't all sit there.

What does the yield curve inversion actually tell me?

Only that short-term money was paying more than long-term money, which isn't normal. Historically that's happened before rough economic stretches. It's not a prediction. It's one more reason to have an emergency fund and a written debt payoff plan.