Is the recession affecting you?

Luckily it has not. I don’t drive, so I’m not personally concerned about rising gas prices. I have noticed the cost of food has gone up overall, but not enough to be terribly upset about.

No one is my family has lose their job or house either. In fact, my mother bought a house about a year ago.

Hell yes!! It is screwing me BIG TIME!!! I lost $90,000 equity in m home, my 401 K is in the tank….my customers are buying ½ of what they used to and taking longer to pay for what the do buy. Groceries, gas, utilities and taxes are up and the services I get in return are down. So yes I am affected and I am adjusting, cutting back, making do with what I have I just WISH my State AND Federal governments were doing the same instead of hosing me with more taxes and raising the ones I already have.

The “recession” hasn’t really impacted me yet, but the inflation definitely has!

Last year it hit me really hard. For a while I was considering moving in to a smaller place and selling a few belongings. However, this year is much much better, it’s too early to say yet, but this could be the year I earn more than any other year in my life so far. I am now considering moving in to a bigger place, and getting some new belongings.

However, even though I’m earning a sick amount of money this year, and have a good daily bit of cash just for spending and fun, I’m still finding things very expensive.

Every time the bank or the government realize I have been paid, they try and take as much as they can in fees and other bullshit. Just last month the government tried to get 300 bucks out of me, by dragging up some bullshit tax thing from 7 years ago. It’s only because I keep all paperwork that I was able to prove they were just trying to milk me.

Last year I felt like I was living in the desert, sustaining my self by slowly consuming the corpses of my friends that had not made it. This year I feel like I’m the big cheese on wallstreet, who is living the high life but will be ruined with one wrong move.

EDIT: “this year” meaning from march onwards.

@Cruiser: “I just WISH my State AND Federal governments were doing the same instead of hosing me with more taxes and raising the ones I already have.”

When did the federal government raise taxes?

@tom_g That Tanning Tax has hit me in the wallet very hard and I am none too happy about it! ;)

I can’t say it’s affected me except make me mad about the grocery bills. I don’t go out enough to be upset about gas prices either. But I will say he mowed the yard today which costs $40 for the guy to do it. I’ve also backed off on having the house cleaned. So yes; it has affected me now that I read this—LOL

It’s odd, my larger clients, such as department stores, have moved their photography in house. That’s a noticeable hit to my bottom line. The salaries they pay in-house employees is a mere fraction of what my freelance day rate is. But smaller boutique operations who used to shoot in house can’t support a photo department any longer, and thus find it appropriate to hire freelance. They just don’t shoot enough to justify supporting the department. They pay less than department stores for freelance work, but the work is more rewarding and creative.

I can trace this trend all the way back to NAFTA. What were they thinking?

The US economy is suffering a leveling off with third world manufacturing. The American lifestyle is not coming back to what it was, ever. It’s just going to continue to lower while the third world improves their life standard. It won’t settle down until American labor and Indian/Mexican labor are brought to equal levels. As much as I feel the crunch, I cannot say it isn’t fair. As much as I’d like to think my “American” talent is worth more than a Chinese photographer, I cannot honestly claim my eye is any more valuable than theirs.

I also find that these days, less work comes from pursuing new relationships to show a portfolio, and more work comes from personal connections that don’t even want to see a portfolio. I don’t think I’ve actually shown a portfolio in years. Nobody has the time to sit down and discuss a project. They just want the web site address. Little concern is put to how images translate to print. Quality levels are lowering across the entire industry.

One thing I notice on the outside is that there are so many cars driving around these days with really noisy mufflers. No one can afford to fix their mufflers.

On the inside, psychologically, we are limiting our spending. Just because. Fear, I think.

Yes. I lost a job that was affording me to work only 40hrs a week, Mon-Fri only, no evenings and I was able to afford to buy my mother a house and make the mortgage payments for her. Once I lost that job then I lost the house within 3yrs and with it any hope of security and savings both our futures.

These days it takes 3 of us to support our household, no one has a car good enough to go on a trip with, each time the cars need repairs or an animal gets sick then we feel hard pressed because our cash buffer is never what we’d like. We eat out less often, rarely go to a theater movie, don’t shop retail stores anymore and know our grocery items prices by heart.

My fiancee doesn’t see his kids as often as he’d like because they live 1½ hrs away which takes $50.00 in gas each way to have them just overnight. We are hard pressed when they come up with summer school programs to be paid for or one of them wants a computer for a birthday gift. Times are very different from a few years back when their dad made an income to buy them new clothes twice a year or to send them on a yearly trip to their grandad’s home.

I graduated college in 2008, so I basically enterred the job market when it sucked. Luckily, I have no aspirations for a “career”, but it’d be nice to be able to pay off my loans a bit faster.

Well, I’ve almost lost my teaching job twice because of budget cuts, so yeah….scary. I’ve never been directly affected by the economy like that, that I know of.

Nope. Still poor.

@SavoirFaire Yep! That’s probably why it never affected me before, too! Like the great depression. Of all the socio-economic groups, the very poor noticed it the least.