Forgive me if this has been asked already. How has the crisis over the last month affected you? I had a savings of 3000$ in rrsps drop to an all time low. Now it’s at about 2000$. Thats it though for me. My job seems fairly stable right now.
How about you?
Six or eight weeks ago, we lost almost half of our savings. Meh, markets flucuate, and we thought we had ten or twenty years for it to grow, as well as stable employment.
Today, my husband was “furloughed” until his next project starts, hopefully in May 2009.
We’re screwed.
I’m graduating in 2 weeks. Unemployment is supposed to flirt w/ 10%. Eek.
I lost more than $2k, more than 50% of my investment.
Last week our U.S. parent company said to make cuts, and the satellite office I work in got the axe, as of next month.
My stock market holdings lost over 1/2 their value recently, but that’s mostly my fault 'cause I thought the market had hit bottom last month and I bought in. (Bought the parent company stocks too… don’t believe your own internal marketing hype! 
)
I’m not too worried, as after 4 years here I was growing… dissatisfied, and some friends of mine have just started what looks on whiteboard to be a fairly solid software startup, so I’m jumping on board there. (~15% less pay, but I’m hoping at least 25% more fun, with promising growth figures).
But really, if any of you down south live within cockpunching distance of a financial lender or mortgage broker, go to town 'cause they’re really fucked things up for everyone.
$65k (Feb 2008) > $72k (May) > $29k (as of today.) I expect it to go down to $20k before bottoming out.
my ira is down 40% from one year ago.
The publishing company I work for is having trouble selling my division, and Bloomberg says that whatever venture capitalists buy us are already planning to cuts costs by $100M. Now considering all the cuts that go into preparing a company for sale and then the further cuts because of the market, how many jobs do they realistically think are left to cut?
My commute this week has gained an extra 15-30 minutes because of transit cuts, and the baby sitter makes $12 an hour. If I take the metro north I’d pay $6, but save $8 on babysitting per day.
ETA: I have one credit card paid off and no car payments anymore, and haven’t taken vacation days (so that I may be paid for them) in the event that I am laid off.
My investments have dropped in value by about 50% (the majority are ETFs rather than individual company stock, so I figure the best course is to hold and wait), but day-to-day life hasn’t been affected at all.
I have a stable government job with a defined benefit pension plan and plenty of seniority. This, assuming the plan stays solvent ( you know what they say about assuming ), largely eases the fear of market fluctuations on my retirement. So I haven’t really been impacted much at all. Yet.
On the other hand having to unexpectedly replace all the ignition coils ( goddamn crappy Nissan design ) and plugs on my car + weekend emergency vet/hospitilization bills has so far cost me an extra ~$3000.00 in the month of November :smack:.
Our investments (Roth IRAs, IRAs, 401(k)s) have lost a pantload. We’re being more selective about the home renovation projects we’re planning. Otherwise, the effect has been minimal.
I swear people keep asking questions that are on the tip of my tongue… 
For me, I’ve been trying to sell my car for a little over a month and have had no phone calls! This sucks…
Oh, and I lost 80% of my initial trading investment from 3 months ago.
I put the rest of my money into VeriChip… bought it at $0.29. It’s now up to $0.71. Worst investment I’ve ever made.
We are doing OK financially, but my wife just lost her job due to layoffs. She made 2/3 of our combined salaries, so that will be a huge hit. Oh yeah, she’s seven months pregnant, which among other things, will make it very hard for her to interview for another job for awhile. She’s not out of work until after her maternity leave is up though, so it isn’t all that bad. She’ll have more time with the baby. We have enough in the bank to stay comfortable for a little while. I just hope the job market rallies by the time she’s ready to go back to work next year.
Well, I’ve been laid off and the country is in the crappers. Other than that, I’m quite fine.
My 401K is languishing, so I’m very thankful that I don’t plan on retiring for some decades now. My company had lay-offs that I managed to escape, but I lost my boss and a friend on my team.
Other than that, I’m relatively unscathed.
My savings are like everyone else’s: down by a tremendous amount.
My main jobs are fine but the publisher of the publication I write for each month is going from monthly to bimonthly. My other jobs are safe. DH works for the NYS government. He said office talk is layoffs or buyouts but so far nothing’s on the table other than a possible raise deferment for next year.
My deferred comp account is down by at least 50%. Conventional wisdom says to get your money out of the stock market into safer investments 5 years before you retire but I hadn’t planned to retire for at least 7 more years so it was still in there. I don’t have to touch it yet and I’m trying not to think about it too much because there isn’t anything that I can do about it right now.
Yeah; I’ve heard so much about it I’m ready to puke!
If they’d (the media, etc.) STFU about it, the crisis of confidence wouldn’t be as bad.
My IRA also is looking quite peaked these days but I reckon everyone’s is.
As far as day-to-day operations, business is still steady in my line of work, although I have worked on only one residential subdivision in the last year. That type of work used to be more than 30% of my billings. It’s been replaced by other things though, so I think I’ll be O.K.
The best part about the recent slow-down is that it’s enabled me to catch up on some of my backlog. I think things had gotten out of hand here when the real estate market was so hot, and a lot of things were designed and built in too much of a hurry; I’m hopeful that now people will have the time to do things right.
As a bit of a hedge against further slow-downs in private sector work, I recently applied for and recieved DBE status with the DOT here. That should bring in a little highway work.
We’ve not had to make any adjustments in our household budget yet - we don’t spend a lot on extras anyway (taxes and insurance take care of most of it!).
Long term - my hubby has a City job and could keep working there for a few more years if need be, so he’s secure. His retirement is a guaranteed benefit so that’s also safe. He has the time in to retire, but will probably wait until the private sector perks back up to do so (wants to work part-time).
So far, so good.
I’m cool, but a friend-of-a-friend got laid off and subsequently had to leave his rental. And I had told my friend I was looking for someone willing to pay rent to live in my unfinished basement, just so I could get some more cash. So now his friend is living in my basement and together we’re learning about how the Ohio Unemployment system works.
Retirement investments are down about $250,000, about half. We are a good ten years from retirement though. We are holding are positions. Guess we are geeting some good deals at this point…(trying to be optomistic).
We’re in much the same boat as the OP. Owls’ 401k is down a bit, but there was less than two years worth of savings in there anyways. His job is fairly stable (hell, half his department is likely to retire in the next 3 years, so I’d think they’d want to keep him), not to mention a good salary for just out of college, and aside from our car we have no debt. Things have been a little tight lately, but we’ve also been trying to put more into savings than usual since draining that account earlier this year.
So overall, no noticeable changes here.