On a personal level, has the recession effected you?

Graham_Devon

IveSeenTheLight wrote: »

We now have an 18 month old son and another on the way.

Another on the way? Fool, scary times!!

Congrats

rockitup

In 2003 I bought a nice house with massive garden and as interest rates went up and up (base rate from 3.25% to 5.75% it got harder to service the large mortgage payments. knew I should have got a cheaper house but income was better in 2003.

Fast forward to late 2007, getting tired of work so took early retirement, sold my house and BTL and cashed in my investments (pretty good timing) but I was looking to do a RTW trip over the course of almost 1 year. Luckily enough I took out a forward contract on US Dollars at $2.01 to A Pound in July 07 (more lucky than good timing) and when the houses were sold in June 2008 transferred all my Sterling into USD. That was my one and only ever FX trade and was intended to buy a house in the US but the falling housing markets put a stop to that.

I exited the trade in January 2009 and sold at $1.402 and collected about 6 years worth of average salary. I cannot believe my luck that I had stayed out of investments during the awful crash and was out of owning property in that time too. Have since bought a cheap house in SE Asia but although weather is good I am not suited to the food, mosquitoes, humidity and boredom.

I have averaged back into the markets since Feb 09 but only have 15% of my money invested now so have lost out on a lot of the growth but have 3%+ on cash deposits.

All in all I have been damn lucky and now have to make the capital work, too bad I have itchy feet for investing but the investment outlook seems too risky at the moment.

michaels

Yeah but a lot your 'earnings on savings' would be illusionary inflation gains as in this case it is only the difference between the interest rate you are receiving and your own personal inflation rate that matters. Suppose you money had been saved to buy a house - if you had got 10% interest but houses had gone up by 15% you would actually have lost out whereas with zero percent interest but falling house prices you actually gain.

PasturesNew wrote: »

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.

MiserlyMartin

Yes, inflation is frittering my savings away.:mad:

MiserlyMartin

rockitup wrote: »

In 2003 I bought a nice house with massive garden and as interest rates went up and up (base rate from 3.25% to 5.75% it got harder to service the large mortgage payments. knew I should have got a cheaper house but income was better in 2003.

Fast forward to late 2007, getting tired of work so took early retirement, sold my house and BTL and cashed in my investments (pretty good timing) but I was looking to do a RTW trip over the course of almost 1 year. Luckily enough I took out a forward contract on US Dollars at $2.01 to A Pound in July 07 (more lucky than good timing) and when the houses were sold in June 2008 transferred all my Sterling into USD. That was my one and only ever FX trade and was intended to buy a house in the US but the falling housing markets put a stop to that.

I exited the trade in January 2009 and sold at $1.402 and collected about 6 years worth of average salary. I cannot believe my luck that I had stayed out of investments during the awful crash and was out of owning property in that time too. Have since bought a cheap house in SE Asia but although weather is good I am not suited to the food, mosquitoes, humidity and boredom.

I have averaged back into the markets since Feb 09 but only have 15% of my money invested now so have lost out on a lot of the growth but have 3%+ on cash deposits.

All in all I have been damn lucky and now have to make the capital work, too bad I have itchy feet for investing but the investment outlook seems too risky at the moment.

What a story, you did very well there. Lucky sod!

MiserlyMartin

michaels wrote: »

Yeah but a lot your 'earnings on savings' would be illusionary inflation gains as in this case it is only the difference between the interest rate you are receiving and your own personal inflation rate that matters. Suppose you money had been saved to buy a house - if you had got 10% interest but houses had gone up by 15% you would actually have lost out whereas with zero percent interest but falling house prices you actually gain.

But houses won't be going up 15%. Houses are overpriced and haven't fallen properly yet they are being propped up by former Labour policy at the expense of high inflation and the prudents savings being hammered.

MiserlyMartin

Dan: wrote: »

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

I rest my case.

MiserlyMartin

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

I'd say only 50% of the holes are fixed around where I live and the Lib Dem council are useless despite adding 0.5% to the council tax this year to pay for the repairs. There are loads of big holes everywhere and even if you report them to the council they still don't do anything. I've just returned from Spain and they have debts worse than us yet their roads are perfect. They probably pay a lot less road tax than us too.

StevieJ

PasturesNew wrote: »

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.

I always got the impression that you had been scraping along on minimum wage jobs, prior to the recession, I appreciate that you would normally have received a decent % on you mortgage bundle (say 5%) but even so £45k (say minus £10k) would be slightly above MW.
BTW the recession not much effect for me.

olly300

Chris2685 wrote: »

As I graduated from university, the recession began.
Kept my part time job which became full time, but finding it hard to find a new one in the field I actually want go into to put my degree to use, and the longer it takes, the harder it will be I think. (Computer programming).

See if you can get a job aboard.

Lots of people in previous recessions have found that companies in Europe aren't as always badly affected.

And as English is the language of IT then it doesn't matter if you arrive and don't speak the local language. Depending where you go it's worth learning it while you are there though.