On a personal level, has the recession effected you?

Really2

I wont go in to the house purchase I am sick of mentioning it now.:D

Mortgage IO part down to £130 but have overpaid £20K now.

Wage increased slightly.

Picked up a few rare watches in the crash which look to have been good purchases (not that I will sell my precious things:) use gollum voice.)

Wife could lose job.

I may look a bit older but definitely a lot wiser.

IveSeenTheLight

Heyman wrote: »

The downside - had to take an across the board 8% paycut 18 months ago. :eek:

The upside - mortgage reduced by £450 a month, half of the paycut now restored as our business recovers and the other half promised for early next year providing our sales continue on current trend. :beer:

So in essence, despite the pay cut, your actually better off because the interest rates were reduced.

Your even better now that some of the paycut has been returned and may be even better placed in a few months time.

Seems like the decision to reduce interest rates has very directly helped out out during this recession :T

Strings

IveSeenTheLight wrote: »

Your joking are you.
If your surfacing relates to road surfacing, you should look at other areas.
I read once that in my VI area it would take a year to sort all the pot holes caused during last years winter.

http://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/Article.aspx/1663995?UserKey=

I've seen a huge improvemetn but not all are fixed and winter is not far away again

that may be so, but the pot of cash is only so big and lot of those repairs are carried out by the local maintenance contractor

Bean_Counter

IveSeenTheLight wrote: »

Your joking are you.
If your surfacing relates to road surfacing, you should look at other areas.
I read once that in my VI area it would take a year to sort all the pot holes caused during last years winter.

http://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/Article.aspx/1663995?UserKey=

I've seen a huge improvemetn but not all are fixed and winter is not far away again

A lot of the surfacing isn't just winter pot hole related, but general maintenance programme that would have done anyway. We have also seen a reasonable amount of civils work through the councils etc. I dare say that they are making sure they use as much budget as possible so that when they have to make a percentage cut, it from a higher figure so that more is left over.

milliebear00001

No impact from a job point of view as I am in a 'safe' public sector job. Slightly better off in terms of buying a house as we are buying a house we couldn't have afforded at the top of the market. OH on disability benefits though, so lots of nerves over those and what the future may hold for us financially. Savings doing absolutely nothing for last year or so hasn't been fun either.

Fiddlestick

maveli wrote: »

Mortgage dropped to £73.00/month from £590.00/month

If I can be nosey and ask, is it an Interest Only or a Repayment mortgage?

If it's IO, are you using that additional £500 to pay down the capital?

A few weeks ago I saw a couple in Wales whose mortgage payment had dropped right down and rather than pay off the capital, they were going to use it to buy a caravan without thinking what would happen to them when interest rates go back up again.

Percy1983

I managed to secure a well paid job, didn't get any % payrise but moved up on the pay scales. (Dare I admit working in the public sector)

The biggest effect for me was my credit cards getting rate jacked left right and center, to which I took control and have nearly cleared them all.

Haven't noticed much on the petrol front, I do own a car but use the bus to and from work so keep mileage down.

My future brother in law is getting a 30% paycut, but when he told me what it was form and too I had no sympathy as he was being massively overpaid.

shaun39

Not much - cheaper mortgage, job was largely unaffected...

PasturesNew

Lost my interest income from savings.
No temp work about, which there's always been when I wanted it.
No jobs about/they don't want me (nothing wrong with me, just 000s of applicants per job)

Overall, between the above, I figure I'm "losing" £30k/year from various income potentials that would have existed if interest rates had stayed where they were and if job losses hadn't been part of the recession package.

Losing £30k sounds like I'm probably loaded... but losing £30k's meaning I'm left with (say) £15k or so at the moment, so pretty shabby bearing in mind what could have been.

Dan:_4

Saved almost 9K on mortgage interest, so far.

1.7% pay rise in April 2008
0.9% pay rise in April 2009
2.4% pay rise in April 2010