Over the past few days, markets have been jittery: the S&P pulled back about 1.3%, Bitcoin dropped 14%, and tech stocks are down a few percentage points. Not a huge crash, but enough to get everyone talking.

What’s more interesting, though, is what prompted that conversation: Google CEO Sundar Pichai just told the BBC that this current AI investment boom has “elements of irrationality” and warned that “no company would be immune” if the AI bubble bursts—including Google itself. This echoes warnings from JP Morgan’s Jamie Dimon that some of the $1.4 trillion being poured into AI will “probably be lost.”

Suddenly, the same AI stocks that were “can’t lose” investments a month ago are being equated to the dotcom bubble of the late 1990s. Alphabet shares have doubled in seven months to $3.5 trillion. People are nervous. Financial Twitter is having a meltdown.

And you know what I am doing about it? Absolutely nothing.

Actually, that’s not quite true; I’m buying more.

The real problem isn’t volatility—it’s you

I read “The Simple Path to Wealth” by JL Collins years ago, and one passage has since completely changed how I think about market pullbacks. It probably has saved me from panic selling at least three times since then, and it’s going to save my portfolio again this time.

Collins makes a simple but brutal point: the problem isn’t that markets crash. The problem is that you panic when they do.

Everybody wants to blame market volatility. Financial advisors will tell you to diversify across “the entire spectrum of investment opportunities”—stocks, bonds, currencies, commodities, international, domestic, whatever. Buy everything and hope something works.

But that’s treating the symptoms, not the disease.

Your behavior when the markets get scary is the disease. The cure isn’t complexity; it’s discipline.

As Collins so succinctly stated, “Toughen up, cupcake.”

What you need to accept right now

If you want to reach FIRE, hell, if you just want to not lose money over the long term, you need to internalize these facts:

1. Market crashes are normal. They’re not anomalies. They’re not once-in-a-lifetime events. They happen all the damn time. Collins lists what happened during his 40 years of investing: the 1974-75 recession, the inflation crisis of the late 70s/early 80s, the 1987 crash (Black Monday), the early 90s recession, the tech bubble burst, 9/11, and 2008. That’s at least 7 major “oh shit” moments in 40 years.

2. The market always recovers. Always. In 1974, the Dow closed at 616. At the end of 2014, it was at 17,823. If you had invested $1,000 in January 1975 and just let it ride through all those disasters, you’d have $89,790 by January 2015. That is an 11.9% annualized return through recessions, crashes, terrorist attacks, and financial meltdowns.

3. The market always goes up. Not every day. Not every month. Not every year. But over the long term, the trend is relentlessly up. Just look at any long-term chart of the stock market. It’s a bumpy ride, but the direction is always the same: up.

4. When markets are rising, everybody makes money. The difference between you getting rich and getting destroyed comes down to what you do when those markets are falling.

5. Another big crash is coming. And another after that. And another after that. Collins told his 24-year-old daughter to expect 2-3 crashes on the scale of 2008 during her 60-70 years of investing. Smaller crashes will happen even more often.

Crashes are buying opportunities

Here’s something nobody wants to hear when their portfolio is down: this is a good thing.

If you’re investing for FIRE, pullbacks are your friend. They’re not disasters; they’re discount sales. While everyone else is nervous and selling, you should be buying their shares at a bargain.

But you can only do this if you’ve prepared yourself psychologically. You need to know—and not just intellectually, but deep in your gut—that volatility is coming. It will be uncomfortable. But unless you panic, it doesn’t matter.

Major market crashes, says Collins, are “wonderful buying opportunities.” And he’s right. But most investors are too busy freaking out to take advantage.

What this means for the AI bubble narrative

So maybe AI spending really is getting out of control. Maybe some tech valuations are stretched. Maybe Pichai is right that there’s “irrationality” in the current boom. Pichai himself conceded that the industry can “overshoot” in investment cycles, drawing parallels to the dotcom era: “There was clearly a lot of excess investment, but none of us would question whether the internet was profound.”

Who cares?

If you’re investing for FIRE, you’re not investing for the next five days or even the next five months; you’re investing for the next 10, 20, 30 years. Within that timeframe, whether we are in an “AI bubble” or not is just noise.

Is AI overvalued? Maybe. Will there be a correction? Probably at some point. Does it matter for my FIRE plan? Not at all.

Because here’s what I know: in 10 years, the market will be higher than it is today. In 20 years, it’ll be even higher. There will be crashes between now and then—maybe two or three major ones. And each time, I’ll keep buying.

How I’m handling this week

I have my position in VWRL. I have an emergency fund (6 months of expenses in cash). I have my FIRE plan calculated in FireCalc. And I am not touching any of it.

Actually, that’s not true. My automatic monthly investment just went through yesterday. So, I bought more VWRL at a slightly lower price compared to last month. Great.

This is not bravery, and it is not genius; it’s just knowing that this comes with the territory. You pay for market returns with some degree of market volatility. If you want the gains, you’ve got to take the temporary discomfort.

The hard part

The financial media wants you to worry. They want you to tune in to see “what this means for your portfolio.” They want you to sell now and buy back later (spoiler: you’ll do both at the wrong times).

The financial advisers want you to believe investing is complex so that you’ll pay them to manage your “diversified portfolio across the entire spectrum of investment opportunities.”

But the truth is simpler: buy index funds, hold them forever, and don’t panic when things get bumpy.

That’s it, that’s the whole strategy.

The hard part isn’t in the strategy; it’s in your psychology. It’s in training yourself to see volatility as normal, expected, and ultimately irrelevant to your long-term success. As I wrote in The FIRE Paradox, reaching financial independence is only half the battle—the other half is mastering the psychological shift.

Collins writes, “To be strong enough to stay the course you need to know these bad things are coming—not only intellectually but on an emotional level as well. You need to know this deep in your gut. They will happen. They will hurt. But like blizzards in winter they should never be a surprise.”

The bottom line

We’re due for a significant market crash, and there will be another after that. What fabulous buying opportunities they’ll be.

But only if you’re tough enough to stay the course.

So when the next headline screams, “AI BUBBLE BURSTING: SHOULD YOU SELL?” the answer will be simple: no. Toughen up. And maybe buy a little more.