From the Colosseum in Rome to the palace at Versailles, look around Europe and you’ll find artifacts of once-great empires. What happened to them?

Each faced its own challenges, but there was also a common theme: They had poor financial management and became overburdened by debt. That’s why a recent analysis in The Wall Street Journal—titled “Will Debt Sink the American Empire?”—is worth our attention.

In 2024, the federal government’s budget deficit will come in at $1.9 trillion. That will be added to an existing debt load of nearly $35 trillion. To put that in perspective, the debt is now closing in on 100% of gross domestic product (GDP), up from just 70% in 2012. If the current trajectory continues, by 2028, our debt will exceed the prior all-time high of 106% of GDP, a record set in 1946 as a result of World War II.

Given these figures, why is there no political will in Washington to right the ship? As the Journal points out, deficits are—ironically—one of the only topics that unites the political parties. That’s because the two main levers to reduce deficits are to either raise taxes or to cut spending. Neither is appealing to any politician.

In part, the issue is also structural, because so much of the budget is non-discretionary. This year, 47% of spending will be allocated to Social Security and Medicare benefits, 14% will be spent on defense and 13% on interest payments. In other words, even if there were more political will, there isn’t a lot of room to maneuver.

There is a school of thought that views debt as a non-issue, arguing that the U.S. government can simply “print money.” While that’s technically true, another economic concept also applies: When governments go too far in printing money, a side-effect is that it tends to lead to inflation. We saw that during the Covid era. When the government ramped up spending in 2020 and 2021, the result was that inflation hit a 40-year high in 2022.

This idea—that printing money leads to inflation—is not a new concept. In the last years of the Roman empire, when the government began spending far beyond its means, the imperial treasury began to “print money” in what it thought was a subtle manner: by reducing the silver content in each of its coins—from 100% all the way down to just 0.5%. This led to inflation, and even hyperinflation in some years. In the year 210, for example, the government was forced to raise soldiers’ wages by 50%.

From there, things unraveled. Without any further ability to dilute the currency, Roman officials turned to burdensome tax increases in an effort to keep up with spending, but that only led to civil unrest. Ultimately, the empire fell when, as a result of financial weakness, it was no longer able to defend its borders. According to the Journal analysis, other empires, including those in France and in Spain, followed very similar paths.

In economic terms, what happened to these ancient empires is known as “crowding out.” As interest payments consume a greater portion of a government’s budget, the result is that less and less is available to spend on everything else. What’s concerning is that the Congressional Budget Office sees this phenomenon beginning to occur in the United States. According to a recent report, “The current law debt trajectory will reduce income growth by 12 percent over the next three decades.”

Does this mean we’re destined to go down the same path as Europe’s faded empires? Definitely not. Relative to where those empires’ finances were in their final years, our situation is still very manageable. And there are other differences. That said, I do think our debt situation warrants more attention than it currently receives. As I noted a few weeks back, a concept known as “rational ignorance” means that the media sometimes fails to focus on the stories that are most important. But this lack of attention doesn’t mean they aren’t important.

As an individual investor, what steps can you take? I believe that the greatest risk, ironically, is to the investment that is typically viewed as the safest: U.S. Treasury bonds. That’s because, with the debt load growing, Congress has found itself deadlocked on budget debates with increasing frequency, resulting in a number of government shutdowns.

So far, thankfully, it hasn’t gotten to the point that the Treasury has missed a payment to bondholders, but we’ve gotten close, to the point that it’s required the Treasury to employ “extraordinary measures” to avoid a default. The next time, however, we may not be as lucky. In an extended shutdown, the Treasury would run out of options and might be forced to default. For that reason, I suggest looking for ways to diversify your bond exposure. Below are three suggestions.

First, I recommend holding a significant portion of your bond portfolio in short-term Treasury holdings. Because a default wouldn’t happen overnight, short-term bonds might allow an investor to move funds out of the way before the situation deteriorated.

Another way to diversify would be to hold municipal bonds. Because state and local governments can’t print money the way the federal government can, municipal bonds carry more risk than Treasurys. However, municipals might be less risky in one situation: if Congress were deadlocked on a debt ceiling debate, but municipal governments were still paying their bills.

How else might you diversify a bond portfolio? Interest rates today are at levels we haven’t seen in more than 15 years. Most expect that rates will drop—likely this year—but that’s not guaranteed. There’s a school of thought that interest rates may remain elevated, or even rise, if concern grew about the government’s debt load. To guard against rising rates, you might hold some portion of your bond portfolio as individual Treasury bonds, which you could hold to maturity.

What other steps could you take? Because Social Security benefits account for such a large portion of federal outlays—and because the fund on which the system relies is expected to deplete in about 10 years—it’s not unreasonable to expect that Congress might trim benefits for future retirees.

The last time Congress made changes, in 1983, the cuts amounted to an approximately 13% reduction. To address the current situation, benefit cuts might be as much as 20% or 25%. Importantly, however, to be politically palatable, Congress would most likely avoid impacting anyone who is close to retirement age today, and certainly wouldn’t reduce the benefits of anyone who is already in retirement. If you’re earlier in your career, though, and building a financial plan, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume a smaller Social Security benefit than your statement currently shows.

I don’t mean to be an alarmist. Indeed, in the mid-1990s, after years of rising deficits, the federal government actually ran a surplus for a period. So things can change. The current trajectory isn’t a one-way street, and debt wasn’t the only reason those ancient empires fell. But I do think this topic is worth investors’ attention.