How has the Great Recession affected you?
The economic downturn is two years old and counting. Got any stories? Have you changed?
Posted Oct 4, 2009, 8:13 PM UTC
36177
Very little. The good thing is that it gives me more of an excuse to be anti-social or at least avoid some people.
Coworker: "Hey, do you want to go out with us this Saturday?"
Me: "Yeah, that sounds great; but you know what, I think I am going to stay in. You know, the economy and all..."
Of course my cashflow has not changed even a little bit, but people somehow view this as perfectly acceptable. I thank the evening news.
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Same here. Alot of people I think didn't have any income change in this recession
4
Only impact for me was that my raises the past two years were small and nothing.
This means that I can't have quite all the nice things I want, and if I want to splurge somewhere, I have to save other places. Bring a lunch to work vs 5-8$/day if I eat lunch somewhere else.
The raise would be nice, and it would allow me to start formally saving, but that should come next year. Everything said and done I have it nowhere near as bad as a lot of people I know.
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Can't afford medical treatment and am in constant horrible pain.
Used to be the richest person in my social circle, now I'm the poorest. Also went from being the most cheerful to borderline suicidal.
I was also homeless for a short while when I made enough to buy food but not enough to afford to live anywhere. That was actually surprisingly fun though. It wouldn't have been in a worse climate or probably anywhere other than the tourist town it occured in. "Oh no, I'll have to work out of a beautiful park that has free electricity and wifi"
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Dude.. you complete me. 6+ mo. homeless, living in car, working in office. WiFi and electricity. Stayed at a cheap motel once a week so that I could see my son. Now I'm out of depression and slightly back on my feet, shooting out my resume at a rate of 10+ per day. If nothing else, actively marketing yourself and using your mind for something productive is a good way to get back in your groove.
8
6+ mo. homeless, living in car, working in office. WiFi and electricity.
It's an odd experience, isn't it. I was kind of lucky in being a bit obsessed with technology before. So tons of ebooks, music, audio books, mobile internet, even a few solar batteries. In some ways just totally out of it, but in others just with the stuff in my backpack I was living a life a lot of people would consider enviable.
I think a lot of people don't get that about the homeless. There's the traditional bearded smelly guy on the sidewalk. But it is possible to do while still blending in 100% with the people around you. Or I guess I was closer to 90%. But I still knew a lot of folks who had no idea that I didn't have a home.
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It's important to be treated normally and blend in, otherwise you start to feel like a pariah.
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Can't you just go to the ER and not pay the bill? Its what everyone here does.
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We're talking years of work, not a night.
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I'm sorry to hear , have you thought about going overseas for healthcare?
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Have you tried emigrating to a country with health care?
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It's made me realize that it's a great excuse for management to try to mistreat you.
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Tom I told you to get off Reddit once. I'm not going to tell you again.
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But it's a Sunday! :(
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Be happy you have a job! eyeroll
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YUP! My boss has cut my hours from a fulltime job to a part time one. And is forcing me to work 7 days a week if I want to have any health insurance. And I am expected to do this.... prettymuch forever, even though he said that if the economy improves (and the business does better as a result)... I will get my old hours back.... but I dont believe a word of it. Its just him trying to squeeze/use me as much as possible so he will look better for his boss. I hope he dies in a fiery car crash.
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Isn't that why we all beat it?
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Do not try the potted plant advice if you own a collection of cacti.
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I was laid off from what was one of the nations largest homebuilders, and a week later, after six years of trying with nothing but miscarriages, my wife got pregnant with our son.
My wife was laid off after 14 years at her job the week she came back from maternity leave. My sister-in-law was laid off six months after our son was born.
But we had great upsides. We have a beautiful son, I found a new job after being unemployed for only six weeks that pays way more than the old one, my wife got to spend the first six months at home with our newborn before finding a new job five minutes from our home, and my sister-in-law is now our nanny.
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I don't notice any changes. I wouldn't even know a recession was happening if it weren't for the media.
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I'm jealous of your situation.
5
Same here. Although I have gotten some amazing deals on plane tickets.
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Got laid off (web application programmer) 24JUL2009. Still haven't found another job. I am a little scared because I am 62 years old, although I do not know how much of a factor it actually is. I live in San Francisco just in case anybody knows of anything...
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62? how much further away is social security? It should be about this time right?
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I wanted to put it off until I was 72
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Thats too far away, life is short. I would take the money now? or when I was 65 at least. And move overseas, I know lots of guys in the philippines living like kings on $800.00 a month or more.
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Are they living like Kings after the flooding?
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Thank you for the advice.
1
It's been really bad.
No raise for years and years and years now.
The last year was the worst. Justifying my existence at work daily. As in "X will be shadowing you for the next several months to see what you do at work." Really.
Company tanking and we're now at about half the staff as we had two years ago. There are empty cubes EVERYWHERE. You can tell what month/year a person was fired just by looking at the calender on the cube wall. Dead people don't change their calender.
Whole floors are abandoned.
It causes a shift in mental perception. I stopped paying bills on time. I stopped getting the mail from the mailbox. I stopped buying anything.
I started doing mental gymnastics nightly about "how long could I survive starting tomorrow..." It shades everything I do. How I act, react, and plan. It's post-apocalyptic thought 24/7 and it has to stop soon.
And, I haven't lost my job - yet. Others have it worse. Much worse.
10
It's affected my family and I a lot. My dad lost his job at a pulp and paper factory, they closed down the whole mill. My brother, who is a carpenter, couldn't find work for a long time when it first hit. I'm in in university and I was unable to get a good job over the summer, so I have very little money to pay for school, rent and food.
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Similar situation, I couldn't find a single job on my campus over the summer or even at the start of school. Now I have 30 bucks to buy food for 5 weeks
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Go get some food stamps. No shame in it, you have to eat.
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Ramen and water. Sucks, but it'll feed you. Also, food stamps.
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rice is much more cost effective. i find ramen only fills me up for very short amounts of time
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I'm 30, married, kids, Marquette University Degree, have owned my own business and currently work at Subway.
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Im younger, married but no kids. I went from graphics design to working at subway.
First day my manager bought a gold 'grill' for her husband from a kid who walked in selling them. (fake gold teeth). It just got worse.
I feel for you but I applaud why you're doing it, anything to pay the bills when you have responsibilities.
Good luck in the future, I hope your family appreciates what you're doing for them. My wife will forever trust me to do what is necessary for her now that I had the chance to prove it to her, so I would do it again in a heartbeat.
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Did you own the Subway where you currently work?
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No. But frankly, from what I've seen so far, that might not be a bad Idea.
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This guy i worked with(he recently quit) worked 3 jobs. When he quit my manager said "i figured he would quit soon, he used to be a VP at X(one of our largest competitors."
We both worked technical support. His other jobs were at Burger king and a grocery store as a bagger.
1
Lack of job after graduation as well, despite a great GPA, work experience, etc. Living at home with mom and pops.
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Honestly, it hasn't much. My husband switched jobs within the company to make sure that he was working for a team that actually made money. But other than that, we live below our means and have an ample savings, so the sum of our stock portfolio hasn't really worried us.
The people in our lives that it's impacted the most are my husband's parents, who are at retirement age (in their early 70's) and were just about to pull the switch when the economy went bad. But they seem to be doing just fine continuing to work, and are indeed now questioning whether they should retire at all. They enjoy working.
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I've realized a lot is out of my control. When I start to get down on myself, I cite things that I'm grateful for and it has made a big difference on how I see things.
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It's been very strange.
During the so-called boom from 2004-2007ish, I was repeatedly unemployed, underemployed, and generally a marginal part of the economy.
Today I've got a great job with a great company and am making a decent salary.
I spend my days doing productive things in my cubicle and surfing reddit and being nice to my colleagues.
Everything should be rosy right?
BUT I STILL CAN'T SHAKE THE FEELING THAT A SYSTEMIC COLLAPSE OF OUR ECONOMY IS GOING TO HIT WITHIN THE NEXT 12-18 MONTHS.
We're at near historic levels of unemployment.
Our government has already spent all the money it has on failed bailouts, so it will be powerless when the shit really hits the fan.
The housing market that most people think is going back up is in for another round of chaos due to the coming ARM resets and the "shadow inventory" the banks are trying to keep off the market.
Most common calibers of ammunition are backordered at every major firearms store.
I mean, I wonder if I should be honing up on basic survival skills and have some rural land purchased, or if I should just chill the fuck out and enjoy life.
5
I'm in an industry that's been hit hard, lots of friends laid off. I just lateraled to another company and got a big raise. Feeling pretty good about myself, to be honest.
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Lost my house, retirement, a car... gained depression and sadness.
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=( Keep your head up. Hopefully things will change! I would suggest looking into local nonprofits and other organizations that may be able to help you out while you're getting back on your feet.
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Re-applying for student loans as we type.
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It's the Great Recession, Charlie Brown.
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Lack of job after graduation
This, unfortunately. No one want to hire an engineer when no one is buying the products we design.
One of the reasons I chose engineering was that I was certain I would be able to easily find a job after graduation...
Yeah, so much for that.
I was in aerospace engineering last year and I know exactly how you feel!
I would suggest, if it's not too late, to switch to a cs major, or at the very least, pick up a CS minor. The job market for cs, it seems, is still pretty strong.
I went ahead and finished off aerospace and am getting my cs degree.
I actually received an offer (pretty competitive) this fall and have several interviews scheduled on the basis of my cs degree.
Go with CS!
That is a great idea but I already graduated! I think the short term outlook is poor(for everybody at least) but I have no doubt that I made the right decision picking engineering. I wanted to minor in CS but at my college we had no room for a minor unless we stayed on longer which really wasn't an option for me.
In some respects I am grateful that I am unemployed. I have some friends that have graduated and moved onto the next phase of their lives without having any time to rewind, decompress and think about the big picture. This is more or less the reason I decided to not attend graduate school because I wanted to get some industry experience before committing even more time(maybe even more money) to engineering since I am interested in peripheral fields like economics, business and public policy too.
You are going to be unstoppable with a CS and an aerospace engineering degree. Congrats on the offer!
I got an engineering job right before shit hit the fan late last year. If I graduated one semester later, I would still be unemployed.
The same. I hope to go to grad school to try to wait this out.
I was lucky to find a good job right out of college (2005). I got laid off last year though, and I've been looking for work ever since. I'm now hoping to go to grad school too to ride it out. Maybe this is a good thing though. I never would have even considered grad school a few years ago, but now when I get done with that, hopefully I'll be even more qualified than I was before.
I'm bouncing around, I guess trying not to graduate until things pick up a tad.
There are still jobs, just fewer to go around, and so you have to do more to make yourself stand out. If you haven't already, start using LinkedIn like crazy. You'd be surprised at how many are using it now and how powerful it is for finding the right contacts at a company you want to work for and how to find out about jobs that aren't being made public.