How are you coping these days? Share your story.

Originally posted by CommanderSinclair
Lets see,

Can't pay my electricity bill, so I'll be disconnected....soon.
I'm a bit in debt.

Anyone have a generator they can donate? Life is getting hard.

Wish I had some way of getting electricity.

[edit on 2-7-2008 by CommanderSinclair]

Been there, done that. There are two ways you can take this. The way of despair..or the way of challenge. I chose the way of challenge. I took my experience to add to my survival skills.
What will you do with your time?
What will you eat?
How will you find ways to do things without electricity?

Learning this can help you in many situations, from a natural disaster..to 2012 (If you believe in it).
There are many worse off. If you still have a roof over your head, and food to eat, and a warm bed to sleep in..you are doing OK.

Hi all!

I live in the Indianapolis area, we are a very diversified economy unlike say. Michigan. I used to think that the diversity we have here in business would allow us to be stronger than other big cities, but I must admit I was very wrong. The economic turmoil we are in is inescapable and it has a long way to go sad to say. It has begun to hit us here also.

I am a business owner of 7 years in the construction industry. I have been growing every year since I started. My wife has been at her job for the past 27 years, but her company was just bought. She will not know if she has a job until the 3rd quarter. We have a very modest house a dog and too many bills.

I have slowed down considerably in the last month. I'm usually booked out at least 2 or 3 months at this time of the year. I am booked till the end of July right now. My clientele are high end homes and cash rich folk, but even they are beginning to weigh the times ahead as my phone has quite literally stopped ringing in the past 2 weeks. I guess you can say that our financial problems are on me and it's tough to deal with every day.

I am scared to say the least, but I won't let my beautiful wife know that. I am old school and grew up as I must provide for my family. I have tried to stay up on current events lately, but even with the info I get, I still don't know what I'm going to do if/when the bottom drops out. This is all I know and if my income drops any further we are toast. I'm just trying to do all I can to get by daily.

I wish everyone here the best in these troubling times.

Peace!

Guz

reply to post by ALightinDarkness


That's what it's all about. If money get's tight, you adapt.

There's no real reason why quality of life has to suffer.

There was another mention earlier about there not being enough jobs in the UK. There might not be many jobs in a specific industry, but there are plenty about.... they might not be glamorous, but if they pay the bills then what's the problem?

reply to post by schrodingers dog


I live in California and it is rough. My fiance, myself and 19 month old live off of 1,800 dollars a month. I am a recent graduate with my Masters in education and can not find a job in my field because the governor cut the education budget by 6 billion over the next three years so what that means is there is now a teachers hiring freeze for the next three years and over 70,000 teachers who are already in the workforce are being fired. I am a college graduate living the supposed American dream: I live two blocks from the beach in California, I have two degrees, one being a graduate level degree and I am still living in poverty. It is disheartenng but I get by knowing that it could be a lot worse.

reply to post by DenyAllKnowledge

Please don't take this the wrong way but, if I worked a low paying job to begin with than your scenario would be ok. I can't help the fact that my income is what it is. It is because of very hard work and trying my best. If the economy keeps going down there is no way I will be able to go to work for the other guy and pay my bills. I have no problem giving up my home and living in an apartment, tent or whatever if it comes to it. I have worked my arse off to get where I am though and the fight is on...hope I win.

I have known starvation in my life amongst other bad things, I'm a warrior. I feel sorry for those that have never learned survivor skills in their life. There may be an awakening!

Peace!

Guz

Great thread ! Stared and Flagged

I live in Quebec, Canada.

It may be a bit different here...Or is it ?

I`m lucky to work for a very rich company (Quebec-Hydro). My hourly salary is 33$/hour. I work 74 hours bi-weekly, and what is left in my pocket is HALF of what I made (including Alimony).

I pay like 285$ Federal income tax and 343$ Quebec income taxxxxxxx, per bi-weekly pay.

Almost Everything we buy here (except food), we pay 13% tax, even on a new car !

Gas (Regular) has skyrocketed to 1.42$/Litre witch is about 5.37$/Gallon.

Food prices are also on the rise, buying a t-bone steak, is around 10$ for a decent one, beer is, on a good day, 32$/24, smokes are 7-8$/pack...

My rent is now 765$/month 1 room appart (including cable, heat, a/c, electricity), my car payment is 580$/month, internet is 46$/month and car/home insurance is 75$/month.

Thank God, my cell phone is payed by my work, so no phone bill.

My groceries is roughly 100$ a week.........

I went to the USA 2 times this year and I found that it was not as expensive as in Canada.

The problem here, is the darn taxes over taxes.....

So far I`m hanging in, thanks for my work and some overtime, that God for that Overtime, because without it, I`d be in debt.

We are all suffering I guess, this seems like a world wide thing.

The Middle Class will be annihilated very soon...

Do they want us to be like that guy in "Man vs Nature", where he eats scorpions and spiders ???

I have sympathy for you all, we are just not part of the Elite, they can lick and eat my poop.

Grinder.

Things aren't bad yet, but they so easily could be if one or two things go wrong.

I live with my fiance in a 2 bed house, which we bought as a derelict wreck and restored, so our mortgage payments are slightly lower than average, and we have 2.5 years left on our fixed rate deal. We both work and have an average household income.

I've been laid off twice in the past 12 months, once due to an employer going out of business, and once because my employer was taken over by a bigger company, asset stripped and closed down. Fortunately I've only spent 1 day unemployed during that time, and now earn about 50% more than I did 12 months ago: it has been a make or break 12 months, and thankfully it proved to be the making of me.
However, if my current employer went out of business, I doubt very much that I could walk straight into another job this time. The economic climate has changed so much in the past few months, people in my line of work aren't hiring any more, our competitors are going out of business. I'd be very much up the creek without a paddle.

Bills have absolutely rocketed for us: food spending is roughly double what it was 2 or 3 years ago, fuel doubled too. Electricity has become shockingly expensive (like the pun?), as has gas, with energy bills set to rise by up to another 40% within the year.

It feels like we are aproaching a financial knife edge, even with improved personal circumstances. we've taken to growing our own fruit and veg, and started making contingency plans for procurement of water, food and heat. There's just such a level of uncertainty in the air.

reply to post by Grinder




$8 Bucks for a pack of smokes?


Good lord.....that is obscene. I would quit, easier said than done though I know.


Wow.

reply to post by Grinder

The problem here, is the darn taxes over taxes.....

You get that in a Socialist society...

But hey, how do you like the health care?

My husband's grandmother left us her house, so no mortgage.
We have never owned a brand new car.
Through a friend of ours, we have purchased salvage cars. So, no car note, either. We only have one car.

We don't have children, yet.

My husband is in school to be an X-Ray tech and he works in retail to pay tuition. I work out of the home.

Last summer, I started a garden. I have planted some fruit bearing trees as well. We grow veggies and herbs.
It's a good amount of work, but very satisfying. This saves us a ton on food costs.

I am a smoker. A year ago, I switched from pre-packaged cigarettes to rolling tobacco. I spend about 10 bucks a week on my habit as opposed to the almost 50 dollars I used to spend. Also, I smoke less.

Even if you purchase a tobacco loader (10-12 bucks. One time expense if you take care of the machine) and empty tubes, about 3 dollars for 200 tubes, you're still saving.

Since the start of this year, I have gotten the materials together to build two solar powered generators.
I power some appliances off of it. I eventually plan to have 12. You can find out how to do that here: rain.org

We both sell plasma. The plasma money goes straight into my savings account. That is how we pay or vacations etc. My husband has his own savings account. Part of his check directly deposits into there.
That's our emergency fund.

With the economic stimulus money, we paid off two credit cards and partly paid off another.



It's rare that we buy brand new.

We almost always hit clearance sales and thrift stores.
Also, we have been buying our books from used book stores, using paperback swap and Alibris

For DVD's, we go to Game Stop and buy used. There's also a DVD swap site.

While we are not and probably never will be super rich, we have plenty.
I hope others can benefit from something I posted.

[edit on 2-7-2008 by morbidtracie]

[edit on 2-7-2008 by morbidtracie]

Hi everybody,
I started this thread last night and I just logged back in.
Wow, I am so touched that so many people have opened up their lives to the rest of us.
I can't believe the response.
I actually just came back from the vet, my bulldog jumped of the couch the other day so I took her in because she was slightly limping. Turns out she has a torn acl which is going to set us back $1800, unbelievable.
Anyway, I'm going to spend the next hour going through the thread because I want to make sure I give each post the appropriate attention.
But I would like to thank everybody who has contributed in advance for their candor.
Big Love!
SD

reply to post by DenyAllKnowledge


Yeah - I find it odd that people think there is some sort of glamor with being able to talk about how bad you have it. I'm sure if I told my life story I could be a rival for some of the other "oh woe is me" stories here, but I realize that life is, ultimately, what I make of it. You live only on what you earn, and you make sure you have a skill set that is not only in demand during "economic boons."

It is about sacrifices and learning that you can't have everything you want. I'd love to study religion, I applied for several religion PhD programs - I decided not go to any of them and focus on a more lucrative field because a PhD in religion does not guarantee me any job. But I know if I did it and posted on here about how I had a PhD and couldn't find a job, people would pat me on the back and tell me how bad I have it and how wrong it is. Well, maybe not a religion PhD since ATS members love to bash religion, but you could insert whatever other interesting but ultimately not in demand PhD and get the same results.

My wife and I are living off Macaroni & Cheese and generic Hamburger Helper called Panburger Partner (which we actually like better).

I haven't had a full tank of gas in almost 2 years.

Both of us are in school and receive financial aid. After we take care of all of our school expenses, if we're lucky, we might have enough to go out to Chili's or something (which we know we're not supposed to do, but we don't get to go out very often).

We used to have HBO, Showtime, Starz, and the News and Sports tier. We now just have basic cable and internet.

We keep looking at places that have cheaper rent, but so far they're way too small. We've been married a year, and anyone who's married will tell you how much stuff you accumulate in a short period of time.

My wife was recently demoted at work because the position required someone to be there at least 35 hours a week, and she wasn't able to do that while being in school. So we lost some more money there.

All in all, in the year we've been married, we've been screwed so much we feel like Elliot Spitzer's call girl.

reply to post by dracodie


For some people, the S has been HTF in gradually escalating degrees for some time, especially those with children. I invite you to contribute, rather than deride people real and heartfelt stories. I try to temper the trying times with postive effects of hope, but for some, there is no light on the horizon. I'm speaking for myself only. I hope you choose to come back and address the original question.

Ok, I've had a chance to read through the whole thread.
One thing that I wanted to clarify, is that I know for a fact that nobody who has posted with a story of hardship is trying to whine or deliberately wants to act like a victim.
Nor did I want to give the impression that only sad stories are to be shared. I myself, in the OP was at first hesitant to share my story because I know my life situation was far from dire but decided that honesty was to be the culture for this thread.
So we welcome any story, be it one of hardship or one of success.
Nobody is trying to out-poor anybody like a Monty Python sketch.
I just though that in these hard times, sharing our stories would be a nice show of solidarity and humanism.
It's upset me a little bit when posters take issue with others because they think they don't "have it that bad". Even though they have the right to have and post that opinion, it just seems cruel and judgemental.
I find myself very moved and humbled by the courage and positivity all of you have shown in your lives and your generosity with your feelings. So I will keep thanking you for this privilege.

reply to post by Grinder



Actually the guy from Quebec has it PRETTY GOOD...
I am on the other side of the Country in Vancouver, British Columbia
which is WAY MORE EXPENSIVE than Quebec.

Gas today is $1.52 a litre or $5.74 a gallon, rent is $1200 a month
for a single bedroom, my combined federal and provinvial
income taxes are about 7% MORE than in Quebec
AND he pays $10 for Steak....ha ha ha...Make that $14.00 to $18.00
in Vancouver. A bottle of beer in a Vancouver club or bar is almost $6.00,
a pack of smokes is $11.00

Eggs are $4.30 a dozen. Butter is almost $5.00 for a pound/500 grams
milk is $3.70 a gallon and my insurance is $1600 a year (my girlfriend
pays $2400 a year) Electric bill is $280 a month. Gas is about $200 a month
Internet is $132.00 a month (I have VDSL though)
cable is $65.00 a month and if you wan't to but a 3 bedroom
2000 square foot home in Metro Vancouver be prepared to fork out
about an AVERAGE of $810,000. a 1 one bedroom apartment condo
is $350,000 to $450,000 and a two bedroom condo is about $600,000.
A new base or near base level Honda Civic is about
$27,000 to $35,000 which ain't too bad!

Vancouver is 4th or 5th most expensive city in North America
so if you're thinking about moving here, you realistically need
about $6000 for startup costs and an income of about $4000
a month to be comfortable. Average salary is about $42,000
to $48,000 with a B.Sc or B.A. degree.

For a detached house though, our local Vancouver banks wants a
MINIMUM combined income of $132,000 per year to qualify
for a normal mortgage.

If you can hack the high cost of living in Vancouver
it is DEFINITELY a nice city to make a home in though...

See Websites:

www.vancouverscenes.com...

www.vancouverscenery.com...

reply to post by Rockpuck


The free health care, IMO, sucks !!!!!!!!!

You have to wait in line for ages (2-24 hours) to get treatment...

The problem is, that lotsa old folks go there for a "scratch"...I think they want attention, human presence, rather than a band-aid.

I would charge 20$ for each visit and that would greatly improve the waiting time.All of those old folks, with a scratch, would stay home and put a band-aid on themselves.

Free health care in Canada , as you have read my friend, also has it`s serious problems.

reply to post by BlackOps719


Yes my friend, 8$/ pack of 25, nearly 60$ a carton.

I just can`t wait to go up north of here, in Maniwaki, Quebec. They have an indian reserve and the carton of smokes varies from 10$ for ultra cheep in baggies and up to 32$.

That`s a good deal, even tho I am not allowed to smoke them out of the reserve because that is against the LAW.

Piece my friend.

reply to post by StargateSG7


I can not agree more with you on this one. B.C. Is very expensive, Toronto, Ontario too..

I have heard that there are a lot of asians in B.C. right ?

Maybe that are all immigrating and buying all the land. Is that why that is is SOO Expensive you think StargateSG7 ???