• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

How Are You Coping With the Credit Crunch?

TedShatner10

Commodore
Commodore
How are you all surviving the severe economic downturn? How are the economic fantasists messing up in the City and Wall Street affected your day to day living? At my end my dad has recently gone out of work, while I have found it practically impossible to find work in my area for over two years now, with only my mum working in the much maligned public sector racking in the cash. At least the home I'm living is paid for, while I'm trying to get a GCSE Math qualifications, which could be a useful tool for much better things and I can adapt to the virtual collapse of the UK that will most likely happen in the next ten years.

But I still feel like ranting:

Well the Thatcherite counter revolution is over. Neo-Liberalism has run to its logical conclusion, falling on its sword of greed and spite. Not only was the housing and property market shot to s**t through execessive privatization (including council housing) but it was put under strain by blind immigration, with greedy employers in the private sector seeing them as a stop gap to prevent the national debt from imploding sooner.

The influx of immigrants went down as well as a brick through a glass coffee table with the majority of people who weren't corporate executives or small business owners, although I don't hold anything against the immigrants themselves giving the obvious stress of moving to another strange country, often away from their famillies, to work for poor wages while denuding their home countries of proper labour. However the pressure of immigration on society and business forcing society to pick up the tab has done wonders for the BNP.

Then when the corporate greedheads are not importing wage slaves into Britain they're exporting their offices and factories out of Britain. It was a strategic blunder that America and Britain moved the bulk of their manufacturing to China, but more recently giant corporations like Dell Computers and Cadbury-Schweppes had the bright idea of offshoring their British Isle production to Poland (where ironically much of the recent foreign labour came from anyway) and they did this to sell the land the factories were built on (despite the fact the property market is plummeting into the Earth's core). I guess these are the machinations of the European Union, a malignant nascent superstate apparently trying to run Britain into the ground at every turn out jealously for being a partner of the United States and the Commonwealth.

In effect many if not most 16 to 35 year olds have been unceremoniously thrown onto the scrapheap because of this system of retardo-capitalism depending on dirt cheap labour and fat cat salaries, with 200, 000 young (or youngish) bright people leaving Britain a year primarily because of these economic ravages and the general lackadaisical attitude of the private sector in offering reliable employment (with salaries worse than government welfare and random firings).

The economy should serve society not the other way around, and this BS 'Globalization' (brought on by improvements in logistics and communications) is a ploy for recklessly short-sighted and maliciously selfish corporations to run roughshod over the interests of entire populations and even whole countries, ignoring the fact that you need these populations and countries to sustain the economy in the first place.

If this carries on, it just gives the current political and economic power brokers more rope to hang themselves with and I wouldn't be surprised if a socially/economically ruined Britain gives rise to a British version of Mussolini or Castro.
 
I'd really like to know if anyone actually reads all that. I made it through the first paragraph, then.....
 
I'd really like to know if anyone actually reads all that. I made it through the first paragraph, then.....

Yeah, in that spirit,

tl;dr


To answer the title question, though: I'm doing absolutely nothing differently, in any concious way at least. Not that I was Joe Spend-a-lot when times were good, but panicking is what's maintaining the bloody thing. At this point its a self sustaining spiral of plummeting consumer confidence. Shops shut because consumers aren't buying, and they aren't buying because shops are shutting. And in the middle of it all the media stir the storm, reporting every day on 'worst crisis since...' and 'more stores to close...'
 
I'm not doing anything differently either. I own my home, my cars are paid off, I have two credit cards that get paid down every month and my job is secure. I've never been big on having a lot of debt, other than my mortgage. If I don't have the cash on hand, I don't buy anything.
 
No difference for me. I've got a government job (work for the Navy), so no worries about downsizing and the like, or having a bad quarter. Car is paid off. Student loans are, well, student loans. They suck, but on the plus side, the interest rate has gone to almost nothing, so they hurt less than they used to. Then again, the payment isn't TOO high (about $300/month), so it's not too bad, just an annoyance.

House payment isn't great, but it's easily managable, and not having problems. Refinanced my house about a year ago to take advantage of the lower rates, so I'm locked in at about 5.5% and doing fine there. Value has dropped a little (only appraised for 5k less than it did when I bought it 2 years prior, so fairly stable in my area), so might be in it longer than I had originally planned, but no worries.

No credit card debt. I pay for almost everything with a credit card, but pay it in full at the end of the month, so I pay no interest or fees, but get 1-2% cash back, which is nice. Plenty of cash in the bank, although the interest I'm getting on that has shit the bed compared to a year or two ago.

Have a couple investments in mutual funds that took a big hit, but slowly coming back, and am not counting on that money for anything, so can wait that out.

Who this REALLY hurts is people like my father. Was a couple years from an early retirement, and took a big hit in his retirement account, plus his stocks. Until that comes back, he can't really be considering retirement right away. People that had JUST retired are even more screwed, as they planned on having enough, and then lost a big chunk of that, plus no longer have that job to go back to...
 
Business has been down and I'm pimping out cheap web hosting to try and make up the loss and plans to book more venues for shows next year are in doubt so we may be reducing them.

I have noticed a lot of people losing their jobs and finding it a nightmare to get a new one. I'm looking for something part time as well until things settle down and even thats a nightmare.

Spending has been reduced and I can't afford luxury items (mostly stuff to keep my weight up) but a few odd jobs have been keeping me afloat. Even some spare cash for a radio gig this week is going to the bills whereas normally it's spending money :(
 
I'm lucky that the recession hasn't really affected my life (or the lives of my family/close friends).
 
I'd really like to know if anyone actually reads all that. I made it through the first paragraph, then.....

Oh wait...Britain's still the center of the world? :p

I'm not doing anything differently. I still get paid exactly what I was paid before the sh*t hit the fan.
 
Im not doing anything differently, Im being paid more than i was before. But only by 81 cents an hours. Either way, the turnover rate is so high at my job I think I'm going to be okay for a while.
 
How are you all surviving the severe economic downturn? How are the economic fantasists messing up in the City and Wall Street affected your day to day living? At my end my dad has recently gone out of work, while I have found it practically impossible to find work in my area for over two years now, with only my mum working in the much maligned public sector racking in the cash. At least the home I'm living is paid for, while I'm trying to get a GCSE Math qualifications, which could be a useful tool for much better things and I can adapt to the virtual collapse of the UK that will most likely happen in the next ten years.

But I still feel like ranting:

Well the Thatcherite counter revolution is over. Neo-Liberalism has run to its logical conclusion, falling on its sword of greed and spite. Not only was the housing and property market shot to s**t through execessive privatization (including council housing) but it was put under strain by blind immigration, with greedy employers in the private sector seeing them as a stop gap to prevent the national debt from imploding sooner.

The influx of immigrants went down as well as a brick through a glass coffee table with the majority of people who weren't corporate executives or small business owners, although I don't hold anything against the immigrants themselves giving the obvious stress of moving to another strange country, often away from their famillies, to work for poor wages while denuding their home countries of proper labour. However the pressure of immigration on society and business forcing society to pick up the tab has done wonders for the BNP.

Then when the corporate greedheads are not importing wage slaves into Britain they're exporting their offices and factories out of Britain. It was a strategic blunder that America and Britain moved the bulk of their manufacturing to China, but more recently giant corporations like Dell Computers and Cadbury-Schweppes had the bright idea of offshoring their British Isle production to Poland (where ironically much of the recent foreign labour came from anyway) and they did this to sell the land the factories were built on (despite the fact the property market is plummeting into the Earth's core). I guess these are the machinations of the European Union, a malignant nascent superstate apparently trying to run Britain into the ground at every turn out jealously for being a partner of the United States and the Commonwealth.

In effect many if not most 16 to 35 year olds have been unceremoniously thrown onto the scrapheap because of this system of retardo-capitalism depending on dirt cheap labour and fat cat salaries, with 200, 000 young (or youngish) bright people leaving Britain a year primarily because of these economic ravages and the general lackadaisical attitude of the private sector in offering reliable employment (with salaries worse than government welfare and random firings).

The economy should serve society not the other way around, and this BS 'Globalization' (brought on by improvements in logistics and communications) is a ploy for recklessly short-sighted and maliciously selfish corporations to run roughshod over the interests of entire populations and even whole countries, ignoring the fact that you need these populations and countries to sustain the economy in the first place.

If this carries on, it just gives the current political and economic power brokers more rope to hang themselves with and I wouldn't be surprised if a socially/economically ruined Britain gives rise to a British version of Mussolini or Castro.


Actually, I'm doing quite well right now, though I am in the states.
 
I bartend.

People still drink.

I'm doing as well as I ever was. I've never been wealthy or anything, but I can afford to splurge every once in a while (sometimes more than I should).

Right now the biggest strain on my wallet are my student loans, which I just recently started having to pay back. It has nothing to do with the economy; it's just an extra bill that I didn't have before.
 
My job is secure and not really effected by the general economy, I have no credit-based debt or commitments so nothing has changed. I may take advantage of the real estate market in the next year or so, but I've been saying that for years now, so probably not...
 
Heh, an interesting thread given my our current troubles. I'm omitting names for reasons that will become apparent.

Are we in trouble financially? Nope.
Are we in danger of losing our jobs? Nope.

Our problem is that the downturn has made collection agencies desperate. In the last two years I've had a rather nasty crash course in dealing with junk debt collectors to the point where we're suing two of them and well on the way to filing a lawsuit against a third.

This all began after we filed a change of address for my girlfriend when we moved to California. Suddenly, we started getting phone calls demanding that she pay back a debt on a credit card. The thing was, she had never owned a card by the company in question, and while the name matched, the social security numbers didn't. What we learned as we researched into the matter was that there are numerous companies out there who buy up charged off accounts that more reputable collection agencies and the original companies deem impossible to collect. They do this for PENNIES on the dollar, and then try to collect the full amount plus whatever "interest" and "penalties" they can tack on.

So, we start getting these calls, and I do the research. Immediately, we send them a letter disputing the debt, which requires them to provide evidence (as in a signed document from the original credit card company) within 30 days as per federal law. They didn't, but the calls continued and turned right down nasty including threats to take everything we have or to sue us. These threats are, of course, highly illegal when no follow through is forthcoming, and we finally ended up getting a lawyer. I think he musta skipped down the street as it was easily demonstrated that the girlfriend didn't owe the debt. We filled a lawsuit.

The thing is, that hasn't stopped it. This company simply sold the alleged debt to another bottom feeder who began the cycle anew. We did the same thing, eventually filed a lawsuit, and they sold the debt to yet another one of these scumbag agencies. This last one began their first call with "Oh, I'm glad I caught you before the sheriff served you with papers." Of course, no papers were ever served, and this, and other illegal behaviors, have prompted what will be a third lawsuit, but this getting bad. A lot of our time is spent dealing with these assholes, dealing with court proceedings, and disputing their constant illegal attempts to "age" this debt on her credit report to avoid the statue of limitations or to keep it off altogether since it isn't her fucking debt.

Seriously, we may come out ahead in this with several lucrative lawsuits, but it isn't worth the harassment. My advice is to watch your credit reports, and if ou run into them do the research and hammer away at them.
 
Pour lots of milk on it and wait until it's a bit soggy, so it won't cut the roof of my mouth.

Oh, you said credit crunch! My bad.
 
Aside from the gas prices dropping, I haven't really noticed anything changing in my life.
 
Aside from the gas prices dropping, I haven't really noticed anything changing in my life.
Same here. I have very little debt (all of which ie lawyer and credit card will be paid off by May) The timing of this "crunch" is amazing, though. For years I was living a very meager existance (something I became very used to - as in... it was my "normal" lifestyle) But in the last year I've moved up and onward... bought a house and for whatever reason, this seems like the most prosperous time in my adult life. Our jobs seem secure. We've refinanced the home and are very budget conscious. I'm sure my 403B has taken a beating, but whose retirement fund hasn't? Life's too short - I don't give these "tough economic times" a second thought in my everyday life ;)
 
Manufacturing continues its downward spiral... I have a job at the moment just to provide backup insurance in case the Wife Unit's employer decides to downsize the on-medical-leave employee. Happens all the time, the laws do NOTHING to protect you in New York.

My current employer is a manufacturer of custom automation machines. More or less you contact someone like us if you need an automatic or robotic means of manufacturing your product. Thing is with everything either closing down for good or moving overseas there isn't much call for new automation, just repair parts for existing machines.. and that doesn't bring in the cash like a new machine does.

Thing is... if you look at the cost of automation vs offshoring a given task it makes more sense to automate. You can pay one worker $30 an hour to oversee a work-center that does the work of thirty one-dollar an hour workers (or similar "american-style" wages) and you keep the product here in America. Thing is alot of companies are realizing now that China doesn't give a flying motherfuck about intellectual rights protection. The shop you hire to make your product is in 99% of the cases I have seen making a copy of your product to sell under it's own name.

That said, the era of "big manufacturing" is closing down over here and I don't forsee it ever recovering even if we end up in a shooting war with China. We'll simply set up manufactring in Africa or South America/Mexico to support any war effort.

I am not going back to school again. I finished one degree in polymers/plastic only to go back to school a second time to become a machinist/sheetmetal worker. I am making some extra on the side running a couple of manufacturing machines out of my home... but it will not turn into a huge cash-cow.

Regardless of how manufacturing turns out there will always be a hobby market/short-run market in the USA for small batches of custom manufactured items, and a thriving "need it now" repair market.

As for my wife, she works in insurance. Her job more or less boils down to this: She and two other people review a claim and decide if the money can be released. There are over a hundred teams doing exactly what she does. Below and above her are the data entery and processing folks... and from what I understand Souless Insurance Contract Kompany (S.I.C.K.) is looking to send those jobs overseas to India because apparently (according to the internal memo she brought home to show me) people in India can be motivated to type faster using methods that aren't acceptable in America. :rolleyes: Once that happens, they'll be looking at the claim review teams because I'm sure they can motivate claims review teams to work faster using those same methods.

If she loses her job due to corperate assholery (almost a given considering her medical status) we are screwed as she is the primary income right now. We can live off of our savings and investments for awhile but given that they are projecting 10-15% unemployment in Upstate in the near future neither of us are going to have much luck finding work. There are thousands of other machinists and metal-workers with more experience out there ahead of me, and thousands on thousands of business/accounting-degreed folks out there ahead of her and with the upcomming medical complications she's going to be on the "less acceptable" list. :rolleyes:

yet... I'm not as freaked out as I "should" be, because I am certain we will find some way to make it. Grandparents did during the Great Depression and WW2... so why not us?
 
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top