Effects of recession?

Cleaver

kriss_boy wrote: »

Naturally you worry a little about job security but apart from that we are far better off right now. Paying more off our mortgage then we could have ever dreamed of.

Agreed that right now it seems you are far better off. Would you say that this short-term benefit is worth it if it means huge tax rises for you later down the line, cuts in public services that you may use such as health and education and generally living in a huge and potentially dangerous public debt?

Prudent

Downsides: quite a lot of lost interest on savings & petrol still expensive. Found the fragility of our financial systems quite disconcerting.

Upsides: had a lot of work done on the house this year and was able to get trademen quickly.Job has remained the same with small annual pay increases worth more than usual because of lower inflation. Learnt a lot more about the economy - especially from Generalli Being very money saving no longer marks me out as odd

Patchwork_Quilt

Stakeholder pension seems to be losing value

All staff have been asked to take a 10% pay cut at my work. Jobs are now on the line

Husband's firm very cautious overall

Definitely rather worrying

vivatifosi

Income from small business has dropped substantially. In part this has been due to the impact of the recession, partially due specifically to the credit crunch and partially due to the fact that my melanoma ops were poorly timed just before this started. The latter meant I didn't get the chance to get the ball back rolling again after the op and before the crunches came, so started from a worse base than I would have liked.

I now have a p/t job as well as my contracts (I have five distinctly separate "jobs" in total). In a good month I can earn the same or more than I did previously. In a bad month I earn about half. However there's still ample food on the table, the roof over the head is not under threat, the bills are all paid and although the situation has sucked at times, I know that whatever happens we'll manage.

Shatners_Bassoon

Hasn't affected me at all apart from reducing my mortgage payments after the fixed term ended and I went on BOEBR etc....

Still in same job, no pay rise this year but hoping for one next year.

Still in a little bit of debt but who isn't these days?

mewbie_2

Shatners_Bassoon wrote: »

Still in a little bit of debt but who isn't these days?

I'm not...

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

Saved a small fortune on mortgage repayments due to tracker.

Lost a slightly larger fortune from pension fund being decimated but it's now back up substantially since the trough, though not yet where it was.

Made a small fortune buying some shares I thought were oversold in my industry, and they've since doubled. Wish I'd put more money in now.

House value dropped off to around 15% from peak at the trough, but has now recovered to within 5% of peak. Some properties in town are selling at above peak prices now, but I won't make that claim for mine just yet. Could have been worse though, as I'm still up around 10K versus renting for the same time frame.

Have continued to achieve full bonus entitlement and annual pay rises, business is good and improving.

Don't get pestered by head hunters every 3-4 weeks anymore. More like every 3 months, so changing jobs if I wanted to would be more difficult one would assume. Although having said that, the wife has just decided she may want to change employers and has already been offered 3 jobs in less than 2 weeks, so maybe not.

Swings and roundabouts really......

Losses on assets that I don't need to convert to cash for a couple of decades, so they don't really bother me. Gains on assets and cash that I've had to hand, substantial savings on overheads, and earning significantly more money than I did 2 or 3 years ago, so I certainly feel better off.

As with most people, the reality of the recession is that unless you're in the unlucky additional 3% or so of people to lose your job, it has little impact.

kabayiri

Financially, my job rate has reduced significantly during this recession, over 40% down.

We are fortunate in having low outgoings though.

My mistrust of govt has increased though. I'm sure they will be coming after our hard-earned in years to come. Disguising what resources you have would seem sensible.

Pobby

It`s pretty strange how all this is panning out. House prices going up 2 to 300%, in fact more in some areas, nothing abnormal with that. Tons of unsecured debt, fill ya boots you are worth it and it`s normal. The stock market crashing twice in the same decade, yep, totally understandable.

Interest rates down to .5%, well serves the daft beggers right who have saved, silly prats should have been borrowing.

Move on, nothing to see here. Gordon said that the housing market would never be allowed to get out of control and `cause he is a very special magical man he put away with boom and bust. No probs, he`s saved the world, oppps sorry the banks, by giving our cash away.

fc123

Technically, 'The Recession' seems to have totally changed my working life, but when I look back over the last 2 years, I think, businesswise, parts of it needed changing anyway.
Recession just kicked me up the butt to action the (scary, scary) changes.


Our indie boutique T/O collpased by 35% post Northern R0ck...but no-one I knew in London or up North seemed to have the same problem, likewise, in our city, other areas were ticking over fine.

So, we sniffed under our armpits and breathed into our hands as the tumbleweeds blew down the St during winter 2007/08....then I sussed it out. A mass exodus of office workers (mostly local authority about 8000) had left our area. A whole big call centre around the corner shut down and relocated.
1000's of sq ft of offices above me emptied out. Nearby also. I had never looked up before but suddenly realised where a chunk of my customer base came from.

For us, being an everyday type of business that was just interesting to visitors, the impact was far greater. The local Starbucks dropped 50%.
The more visitor-centric businesses ticked over....just down 10-15%.

OH went off and did site work during the winter as shop suddenly earnt us nearly zero profit.

We got a lucky break in Summer 09 which we saw as a launch pad to other things. Things I have done before but had to pull/abandon due to masses of problems in 2003/04. It's same sector but more niche.

So, we took a deep breath and maxed it out. It has been a rollercoaster.
Some days the fear was so acute I couldn't speak. Only on here, or by e-mail, could I communicate. Words just stuck in my throat.


Meanwhile my institutional LL decide to push our rent review for an increase of 40%....meanwhile, my chainstore neighbours were getting 35% reductions, then nil rent as they went into administartion.

Shop T/O took a second dip down post Lenhams/Halifax in Oct 08 and I was , by then, working equivalent of 2 X F/T jobs and the profits from new venture were being gobbled up by loss-making shop.

I constantly tried to negotiate with managing agents but hit a brick wall.

Dec 08, I decided to research the impact on us of the personal guarantees on our mediaeval lease signed 11 years back.

We put the lease on the market but zero interest at the new high rent.

I researched the impact of Bankruptcy on us (as homeowners with equity)
and we prepared to exit.

Feb 09, my daughters school went bust. She went there as the useless LEA wouldn't place her in any of the good local state schools when we moved down...just one miles away with a 21% pass rate.
Local top public school took over and one year got a deal, hers, the GCSE group. She could transfer on existing fees and bursay.

We took advice on leaving shop and left in March 09.

The managing agents then offered it back to us at half existing (and no rent review):rolleyes: but we had already moved on....so I told them to stick it. Greedy, behind the times 30 something, apprentice-type wannabees.
Also, men at the top were double dealing. corporate parasites IMHO. of course.

3 months later, I unravelled all the dodgy dealings at LL and negotiated a surrender of lease @ a fat sum. I will never, ever invest in a pension fund ever. If these are the types that run it, god help their pensioners..and they are top, top, top, (zillions of £) and win awards.

We swapped 200 linear foot of indie boutique for 6 linear foot in the highest selling shop per linear ft in our sector and it is the hardest thing I have ever, ever done....after 24 yrs experience at all levels of retailing my own products.

The other stuff is ticking over nicely and we have a small wholesale set up exporting to USA, Austalia, Scandinavia plus bits and bobs all over the UK.....plus the original online opportunity. All manufactured here in the UK too.

What a long post........apologies;).....making up for lost posting time recently.

House we own...mortgage is so small at the mo (tracker), it gave us breathing space.
Rent on derelict cottage now feels high but isn't going up.

F + F the last few bits of card debt (a hangover from 2003) at the moment.....recession deff helped with the negotiations.

With my Phd in Hindsight, I am now glad we couldn't tide ourselves over, either with savings or debt, as many I know are doing, as we needed to change direction. Just took a kick to make us do it.