Has the Economy Hit You Yet?

[kanrei]

Not a pleasant subject I admit, but it is on my mind and probably on many of your minds as well, particularly because this hobby of ours will be one of the first things it effects. I ask because it just hit me today and hit me hard. I will survive and will not lose anything except weight and DLC, but I am wondering if it has hit you yet? Gas bills, rising cost of insurance (I live in Florida and this is hurricane season), food costs, electric bills, etc, etc, etc.

[QueensoftheStoneAge]

Yep, got layed off. Bummer.

[ultimatespidey81]

it has not hit hard yet though i know how hard it can be. place i work at is going to be very busy until right around the middle of december when things will slow down. plus i have a hobbies which bring in extra cash flow from time to time (fantasy baseball, hold 'em poker, comic book collecting etc etc).

but if anything does go bad, you're right, dlc will not be a top concern of mine lol

hope things work out for ya, whatever the situation may be.

[QueensoftheStoneAge]

plus i have a hobbies which bring in extra cash flow from time to time

Chi-town huh? Sell drugs? :D

[afterstasis]

i wouldn't know because the nearby gas stations haven't had gas in weeks, so i can't even get out to discover whether or not local civilization has screeched to a halt yet.

[vedis]

it hit me hard, i had to press charges for assauly and battery against it

[Gryffindor]

It's hit AZ pretty hard.

AZ's economy is pretty much construction based. If you don't directly work in construction, you likely work in a field that profits from new growth in some form.

The company that my husband was employed with for the past 12 years shut down a couple of months ago. He's having a terrible time finding any type of work and unemployment out here is a joke. The max is $240/wk! Who can live on that?

The company that I run is suffering from the "trickle down effect". We aren't getting paid by our clients because our clients aren't getting paid by their clients, repeat, repeat, repeat.

Both AZ electricity providers incorporated large price increases to offset the high cost of oil and natural gas. Thankfully, in the past 2 years we upgraded our heatpump and appliances to more energy efficient units. This has helped to keep our electric bill & water bill in check.

Gas is still high. Food is ridiculous. One of the last times I went to the store I needed to pick up a 10# bag of potatos. They were $5.00. They're potatos for crying out loud! I kept staring at the price as if it must be a misprint.:eek:

In addition to the above, the county keeps raising our property taxes even though the housing slump has caused housing prices to plummet (creative accounting taxation). We've lost approximately $100k in equity. I'm thankful that we're not upside down but if we had to sell right now there would likely be no buyers. Plus, we'd have to sell for likely what is owed on the loan leaving no money to purchase another home. So, even if we could move to a place where there are jobs, we'd have no way of getting the heck out of here.

In short, nothing has gone down in price except for homes. Everything else (food, taxes, utilities, tuition, health care) has gone up and there's no new jobs.

[killer_roach]

Michigan's economy is in the toilet (unemployment rate nearing 9%), but I've had nothing to complain about so far, other than raises being few and far between (but I just got another one, so that's okay). I'd complain about gas prices, but I don't drive... in all honesty, I'm pretty well insulated from the economy until I get my Ph.D. and actually have to get a real job :)

[ultimatespidey81]

Chi-town huh? Sell drugs? :D

lol no i listed some. i just won $1200 in a fantasy baseball league and $300 in another.

i go to the boat and play poker often, winning between $200-$500 on average when i win or just losing $150 which i walk into the casino with.

i buy variant covers of 'hot' comics, have them graded by cgc and then flip them for multiples of the cover price. one in particular that i have is the white variant of ultimate spider-man #1 which i bought for 10 bucks, sent in to have graded and came back at 9.8 (:eek:) and i have recently seen one selling on ebay for close to $700 :eek::eek: i plan to hold on to this one for a very long time though:D

gotta find a hustle where you can. no drugs....yet lol

[defenestrater]

The recent craziness hasn't made much of an impact on my family, but the economy was in bad shape before all this happened so we've definitely been feeling the pinch for the last year and a half or so. Prices of almost everything going up, and seemingly less money to pay for any of it.

On the other hand, gas prices have actually gone way down lately, and with winter coming on our power bills go down (since we're not running air conditioning all day in the middle of a desert) so we'll get a little bit of relief here soon.

But judging from this thread and what I've read in other places, we're certainly the exception to the rule.

[G_tarRoCK3R]

It hasn't hit me yet, but my boss is getting an impact :( Hes an architect, and hes not really getting any phone calls because of the recession. It really sucks, because I'm afraid I might lose my job :(

If I do, it might be hard for me to get another in my field because of the shortest on construction going on.

[sweet-t310]

I work in sales for a sports team, and some of my clients included Wachovia, Merril Lynch, and many other financial institutions.

Yeah, it hit me.

[Transbrak]

I've been working so much that it hasnt....not yet.

gas prices would have if I would have time to go anywhere.

[Rock_Starman]

I'm Canadian so I'm just waiting it for it completly tank then go buy HMX,the Red Sox and Bruins for $10. They'll all be paid in donuts from then on. :p

[BYC]

Parental unit lost 700,000K in the market.

[bdrizzle14]

i'm a bartender in a tourist town so i've been feeling it since january. i've made less than half of what i made last year.

[defenestrater]

i'm a bartender in a tourist town so i've been feeling it since january. i've made less than half of what i made last year.

Tourism is down here too. I mean, its vegas, so there's still just insane amounts of money being thrown around, but compared to even a couple of years ago things are slow.

[Runesmith]

Thankfully, not yet. It's been ridiculously difficult to find a job that will be work around my school schedule, though.

[sweet-t310]

Just looked at my 401-K for the first time in 2 weeks....

I'm a saaaaaaad panda.

[Bearclaw]

Since I'm just a college student with a part-time job, I haven't felt a major hit. My parents are faring well enough because people are buying motorcycles like mad despite the economic troubles.

[DethBoxx]

Parental unit lost 700,000K in the market.

If they sold shares at this time that was a pretty dumb move.
If they didn't sell, they didn't actually lose anything.

Unless they owned stock in WaMu or something...yikes.

[Lurker37]

I am keeping my head above water in this economy by working two jobs. I have had two jobs for a long time and about 6 months ago I thought about giving one up but then thought better of it.

[kiggidykev]

The news says that gas prices in Winnipeg are higher than any other place in Canada right now (even Toronto!), so yeah.

[c0nd0rd4myt]

I work as just a regular old low-brow cashier in Fry's Electronics out in San Marcos (think Best Buy on anabolics), and I can say its hit me. not substantially because I'm still dependant on my folks and going to college, but still.

our pay ever quarter is based on the ammount of money that goes through our register per hour. around this time last year, i was making 10.50, now i'm only making 9 even. with the new semester started, tuition, books, insurance, fixing my computer, I got about 1100 owed on my credit card and only pulling in about 180 a week (40 of which goes to my 'savings').

I have also noticed that it has become increasingly harder to find a job, even back in January-March, where this wasnt such an issue.

people are allready doing their christmas shopping (first person who vocally said it was a christmas gift was on the 20th). Now, i'm aware that us christians have turned the christmas season into a beast that can't be fed, but I think there's more to it than that. people are buying gifts now while they actually have the expendable income.

[Renrock]

Yeah. I make money when people have extra money to spend. So it's been a little rougher for me lately. (recent TN gas crisis didn't help.)

[rgdrafting]

Yeah it's hit me too....

Here's my sob-story:

I worked for a construction supply company for nearly 10 years (9 years, 9 months, to be exact). The area I live in had a steadily growing building sector....life was very good.

When the housing market crashed a couple of years ago, I started to worry about my job--but, because I had been with the company so long, I was spared in all of the scale-downs. Finally, last year (October 31), the entire facility that I worked out of was closed, and I was S.O.L.

Thankfully, about 4 years ago, I started drawing house plans as a small side project. Because of my experience and contacts in the building industry, I had a good deal going....never too busy, because I didn't want it to interfere with my full-time gig, but always enough work to keep some spare cash in my pocket.

I had been contemplating for quite some time the prospects of making it a full time job...I loved the work, I knew all the right people, I LOVED the idea of being self-employed....but I didn't have the nads to take the risk. Well, needless to say, when I got layed off last year, it quickly became my full-time job.

So, for a year almost I've been busting my a$$ to stay "head above water" in this ever-shrinking economy. Sometimes, I had plenty of work -- other times, I worried about paying the bills....but it seemed to be working out okay.

But, literally since the day of the Wall Street debacle last month, I am literally without work! I've never personally seen such a sudden and complete drop-off in work as I have in the last two weeks. I've worked through a lot of economic and world crises (9/11, anthrax-scares, various 'terrorist scares', soaring fuel prices, war, mortgage company implosions, etc.) but none of them have had the impact of this one.



So, here's the tl;dr: Yeah, it's hit me....everytime it knocks me down, I get up only to get kicked in the gut again! Does anyone have any advice as to filing for unemployment?? Seriously.:o

[JukeBoxHero]

My family is not doing too bad actually from what I'm seeing but I fear that it's going to hit us eventually. :(:(

[funkydunkleman]

Not yet thankfully.

[grumpypariah]

wife and i had been planning on buying a house after the holidays. with the mortgage mess and the banks dropping........who knows if we'll get a loan.

also, work (Clinical Research Organization...google it), small biotech companies are losing their funding, so we are not seeing as much work from them. so, time to pucker up and smooch big pharma extra hard.