I worked through the 2008 crash. Some of this feels familiar.

I keep seeing adjustable-rate mortgages come back into the conversation, and it takes me back to the fall of 2007, before most of us understood what was already starting to break.

I got out of the Army in 2006 and started my first finance job in the fall of 2007. We bought our first home that same fall. Freddie Mac's national average was around 6.4% at the time, and our VA loan closed at 6.25%.

Lenders also floated lower-payment ARM options. That was pretty normal then. We passed and took the fixed.

I don't think 2026 is 2008 all over again. There are some huge differences. But when I look at this summer, some of the ingredients feel familiar.

Oil and gas are high again. Crude hit $147 a barrel in July 2008, and regular gas crossed $4 nationally. Today crude is back above $80 amid continued disruption around the Strait of Hormuz, and the national average for regular gas is back around $4.

Consumer sentiment is awful. The University of Michigan index was 56.4 in June 2008. This year it fell to 44.8 in May, recovered to 49.5 in June and 55.2 in July, then slipped back to 51.7 in August.

Housing affordability is brutal. Home prices remain high, mortgage rates are still close to 7%, and buyers are looking for almost any reasonable way to lower the monthly payment. ARMs are back in that conversation. ARMs made up 7.9% of all mortgage applications in the MBA's latest weekly survey.

Growth is slowing and hiring has weakened, while inflation is still too high for the Fed to ignore. That tension feels familiar too.

Then there is the bond market. The 30-year Treasury touched its highest yield in roughly 19 years this month. The federal government is running very large deficits, and Treasury has expanded its longer-term debt buybacks to support liquidity in the market.

None of that means another 2008 is coming.

There are important differences.

Today's mortgage rules are much tougher. Income and documentation are checked, and lenders generally have to determine that borrowers can handle a mortgage beyond an introductory teaser rate. Homeowners also have record amounts of equity today, which is very different from the leverage sitting underneath the housing market before the last crash.

So the kindling is different.

But that's the thing about kindling. You can usually see it.

The trigger is the part nobody prices in.

I spent 2007 through 2009 working the phones at a large mutual fund firm. After the market collapsed, I listened to people lose money in real time.

A lot of those calls were from retirees who had bought funds they thought were safe income investments. Some didn't understand that part of what looked like income coming back every month could actually be their own capital. They were watching decades of savings shrink and didn't really understand why.

Those were hard calls.

I couldn't fix any of it. I could listen, explain what I could, and that was about it.

After two years of those calls, I left finance for a while. I went back to school and spent the next four years doing mental health and suicide prevention outreach with fellow combat veterans at the VA.

The subject matter was heavier, but in one strange way the work was easier. I could actually do something.

I left that job in 2013. I don't speak for or represent the government, and everything here is my own opinion.

Those years changed the way I think about money and about people going through hard times.

The people on those phones didn't need someone to explain the crisis to them after everything had already gone wrong. They needed more help before it did.

That experience is a big part of why I eventually started StandWatch.

So no, I don't think we're headed for another 2008 just because some of the numbers rhyme.

Eventually, something nobody priced in shows up. We just never know what it is ahead of time.

Whatever you borrow, whatever you buy, leave yourself some room to be wrong. Leave enough room for the thing you didn't see coming.

That's what those phones taught me.

What do you think is the biggest vulnerability in the economy right now that people are underestimating?

The live VA and conventional averages are on Rate Watch, updated daily.