Chicken licken syndrome

Broken_hearted

Very little impact round here.one of the mums at school lost her job when woolworths shut and the bloke across the road isn't getting as much work as usual.
We have been insulating ourselves since joining MSE and hearing the first mutterings of it all going to !!!!. Then the bankruptcy board showed how bad is was and it was obvious the economy was going bad.

Now I see people panicing when its too late and making things worse.

torontoboy45

another quick anecdotal:

an old friend who set up in business 20yrs ago supplying workwear made 12 of 15 redundant last month. the remainder have taken a 20% pay cut.
this downturn has hit him badly.

and so the fight for survival begins.

Phirefly

Cleaver wrote: »

I might have agreed with you a few months back, but not now.

Me too.

I'm self-employed. This time last year I was doing a 70 hour week and outsourcing. Now I'm averaging about 30 hours. Glad I saved twice as much as I earned. Don't regret leaving full time employment though as my last employers have just gone under.

Mr P's got 5 weeks till the sales team is laid off unless something major comes in.

My FIL is on a 3 day week

My best friend was made redundant before xmas when the Pier went under

Other friend & her partner made redundant when a local tourist attraction went under.

Lots of other friends & family appear to be relatively secure though for various reasons.

neas

Wife's friend made redudant 10 employees at her work and her husband was made redudant as a chef at a hotel in devon, however he got a job pretty sharpish like.

Another friend of ours worked as a temp worker at a manufacturing factory, just after xmas they canned all temp staff, he has since been doing temp wrk for the agency (as they like him) but it literally is 2 hours here, 3 hours there.... very little work for him

Wife's work also 2 months back made redudant the temp staff

My work has employed 4 people in last few months.

WTF?_2

Whether or not you are experiencing the crunch personally (yet) isn't really the issue though. It's something you need to be aware of and plan around accordingly.

The media are serving a useful purpose in scaring the bejesus out of people and making them sit up and take notice of their finances but the quality of mainstream reporting of the subject is less than ideal. Too much sensationalism and not enough real information about the issues.

They also waited until the bandwagon was well and truly rolling before jumping on it - it would have been useful to more people if the mainstream media were warning of the obvious underlying problems back when things were superficially fine.

As it was, we went more or less from "You've never had it so good" to "The end is nigh" with not much in between and little real information about the 'why' other than what Downing Street likes to spin (it's all the Americans' fault).

lana22

whathavewedone wrote: »

I do still care about my house looking nice. It's just that I'd rather save the money that I would otherwise have spent on fripperies for a rainy day - eg to get out of negative equity and/or in case we get very high interest rates in a few years time.

As far as I know nick nacks don't increase the value of your house but when your home is losing value each month it doesn't make a lot of sense to me to waste money on non essential items.

If I did post on here saying well our house is losing value but as long as we keep spending loads of money on it to make it look pretty we won't end up in negative equity I'd be ridiculed and subjected to lots of posts saying that I will end up repossessed etc etc etc.

Well not if I can help it I won't. So I'll be laying off the nick nacks for a while if it's all the same to you.

Sorry, I just don't understand the mindset of people who spend on "fripperies" just because their house is gaining money. So to me, the so called "value" of my house is irrelevant to what I spend.
You aren't "losing" money at all - it's money that you never had to start with. That's what has got people in to this problem to start with.
I'm not suggesting wasting money, but I must say the value of my house doesn't come in to my head when I buy a duvet set or whatever! The price of the duvet set, yes, but not the price of the house.

wintersunshine

!!!!!!? wrote: »

The media are serving a useful purpose in scaring the bejesus out of people

It sells papers. What's your excuse?

WTF?_2

The sock puppets are back :rolleyes:

whathavewedone

Sigh.

The reason that the value of my house is an issue is because if we are in negative equity in 3 years time when our fixed rate comes to an end I would like to pay it off and/or have some savings to tide us over if we have to pay interest on our mortgage in double figures because we don't have enough equity in the house to fix our mortgage again.

It isn't just nick nacks that I'm saving on, I only used that as an example because an interiors shop that I have spent in maybe 3 times has gone bust. I thought it was relevant as the topic of conversation is how have you been affected by the recession.

Our house losing value is so far the main way that the recession has affected us in terms of spending v saving. We have a fair bit of disposable income which we are now hoarding rather than spending - not just on the house but on everything. I question every purchase now. Do I just want it or do I need it? If I need it where can I get it most cheaply? I think items such as duvets are essential (although I don't need any just at the moment).

The reason I joined this website is because I wanted to get some tips and encouragement on saving money. That is why I am a money saving convert.

Not sure I can put it any more clearly really without resorting to toddler speak.

JWF

Back to the original topic - I have seen Woolies go bust, a couple of pubs locally now boarded up that were in business until recently, and one friend made redundant and the other on a 3 day week.