This is a good time to have all or most of your assets paid for completely

 In fact, if you study this in college or sometimes even in high school a house is not even considered an asset during times like this unless it is completely paid for. If you go back to around 2006 to 2008 all the way up to 2012 and 2014, it was the people who didn't have their homes paid for that lost them when they went "underwater".

The term at that time that was coined meant that your home became worth less than your mortgage. So, economically speaking it was wiser for many people to walk away from their mortgages and declare bankruptcy rather than to keep their homes "underwater". This caused all sorts of shocks to the economy nationwide and worldwide simply because when  millions "walk away" from their mortgages because it makes no logical sense to keep paying them when they are "underwater" it causes all sorts of other shocks to the economy, such as all the neighbors of this person have the value of their properties devalued as a result of their neighbors walking away from their mortgages.

So, that even if people had their properties completely paid off it wasn't wise to sell them because they weren't worth anything (at least at that time).

I'm not saying that this will happen necessarily in this coming recession because each recession tends to be somewhat unique in how it plays out over time.

But, at least if your home is paid off now, you won't be forced to sell it if you don't want to sell it, and you won't have to "walk out on your mortgage" because you have paid off your mortgage. So, whatever your house is worth it is an asset too you at that point.