ndriscoll parent
Do you live in a home you own with no mortgage? Do you have a fully electrified home, only EVs, and enough solar to run those things? You can make real concrete capital investments instead of abstract financial ones to reduce your required living/"operating" expenses, insulating you somewhat from the state of financial markets.
This doesn't seem to work very well in economies where housing isn't constantly appreciating like crazy (I'm not from the US)...
It does if you're paying for that housing (either rent or mortgage payments). People invest into stocks while simultaneously holding a liability (e.g. they need to somehow come up with payments to continue living somewhere, or to continue having heating/cooling/lights). If you think all of the financial investments available to you might crash, and your source of income may evaporate in a correlated event, you can instead put all of your money into minimizing your liabilities. The goal is not to see your home value increase--you're not trying to sell it. It's to secure everything you need to have the standard of living you want by owning those things.