I planned to buy some altcoins now that we are in a bear market but someone I knew is telling me not to, that its possible more dumps will take place, my question is how will I know when it's the right time to buy coins?
You have not mentioned here which coins you are planning to buy. If you mentioned it, it would certainly have been analyzed to see if it was worth investing in at the moment. But if you want to go with Ethereum then keep going because there is still a good time to buy. Also if you want to go with XRP Dogecoin then I'd say go for it there is still a good time to buy XRP Dogecoin.