Let's get the health warning out of the way first: nobody knows with certainty what the future holds.
If they did, they wouldn't be talking about it - they would be counting their millions beside the pool in some sunny paradise.
But the country's most respected economists have a good track record of assessing likelihoods.
Their word of this moment is "caution". It keeps recurring when they assess how people should organise their finances. It is not a time for big spending on luxury.
They cite a raft of bad signs - the US-China trade war; a limp housing market; minimal wage growth; lots of personal debt; erratic share prices - all tending to persuade people to clutch their wallets and postpone non-essential spending.
And if spending falls, unemployment and bankruptcy tend to rise.
The government, too, is indicating that it is concerned about the economy.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg implied that companies need to update machinery and skills when he urged them to invest more and pay out less - even as he indicated that he thought talk of recession was misplaced.
"We're confident that the Australian economy will continue to grow; we're putting in place the right policy settings for that to happen," he said.
But the economics profession is not so confident.
"A recession is more likely than it has been in the recent past," said John Quiggin, a professor of economics at the University of Queensland (a recession being officially defined as a contraction of the economy, so less is produced, over at least six months).
"There's good reason to worry," said Dr Jim Stanford, director of the Centre for Future Work at the Australia Institute.
The usual signs of a recession are there, according to Canberra economist, Ian McAuley, a Fellow at the Centre for Policy Development.
"It's a long time since we had one and the business cycle hasn't gone away," he said.
There are signs of a US recession, and when America sneezes Australia risks catching cold. It is not as big a customer for Australian goods and services as Japan or South Korea - let alone the biggest of all, China, which takes nearly a third of Australian exports. But contraction in America would dent spending globally.
On top of that, Britain's divorce from the European Union compounds uncertainty.
China and the United States are slapping tariffs on each other's goods - in effect, taxing them - and that means world trade is likely to decline.
The holiday in Bali might not be as attractive as a week in the shack on the coast.
Ian McAuley
"Trade wars usually end in tears," said Mr McAuley, who trained at Harvard before teaching at Canberra University.
He said there was another worrying factor: Brazilian iron ore production had been interrupted and Australia was filling the gap, but Brazilian mines are back in business.
Storm clouds don't always break into storms - but they often do. It may be, for example, that Washington and Beijing make economic peace.
The new British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, may resolve London's dispute with Brussels without a shock to the world economy.
But Mr McAuley is not hopeful. "We have two great policy buffoons - Trump and Johnson," he said.
Australia cannot isolate itself from the global situation, said Professor Richard Holden of the University of New South Wales Business School.
"Any contraction of trade is bad news for Australia," he said.
Would Canberra ride a recession better than other places? That would depend on how the government responded, Mr McAuley felt.
He thinks differences with the rest of Australia are overstated. "We are all ordinary people. We are made of the same clay as the rest of Australia. Our concerns are the same. We are all worried. We are no different from everyone else," he said.
But if, in the face of a recession, the government decided to pump up spending (as many mainstream economists think the sensible response would be), Canberra might do better than other places because more government activity would mean more public servants and all the accompanying lobbyists, with money to spend.
But he doesn't think that's likely because of what he calls the "obsession" of Scott Morrison with balancing the government's budget.
After the global financial crisis in 2008, the government prevented a crash by spending on a myriad of local projects like school buildings, putting money into the economy immediately and everywhere.
According to Mr McAuley, Mr Morrison is unlikely to do the same.
The Centre for Future Work's Dr Jim Stanford thinks Australia's economic problems are deep-seated.
"In 2013, wages hit the wall and haven't really risen since then," he said.
He said the mining and housing booms have fizzled out so "it's not clear what the engine of Australian growth would be".
There is an old joke that if you laid all the world's economists end to end, they would still come to no conclusion.
But disagreement now is on the probability of a raft of bad things all happening.
The Australian Chamber of Commerce's head of economics, Jenny Lambert, thinks that China won't let the economy decline so Australian exports to China will stay up. She sees signs of Australian house prices rising.
On the other hand, Canberra-based Labor MP Andrew Leigh (a former professor of economics and currently the shadow assistant minister for treasury) takes a gloomier view.
He looks at indicators of recession in the United States. Australian industry is not competitive enough - too many industries are dominated by a few firms. "We have a lot of our eggs in one basket which makes us vulnerable to shocks," he said.
So what should a wise citizen do?
Interest rates are highly unlikely to rise, so borrowing might seem attractive - but Ian McAuley warns against increasing debt (unless you're a government).
"If you are tempted to borrow, think first about your capacity to repay," he said.
"If you are borrowing with the expectation of capital gain, that's a mug's game.
"Borrow for what you need, but not to speculate - that's incredibly dangerous."
And with a falling dollar, "the holiday in Bali might not be as attractive as a week in the shack on the coast".
