In1999 I had no trouble parking on the 2nd floor of the garage. In 2005, I’d have to hurry to get a spot on the 3rd floor. Now, 2nd floor is more open than in 1999.
This is Lee Co. FL. The hot spot of the housing boom/mortgage bust. In 2004-5 the county added 40 positions to handle the flood of housing permits. Single family housing permits reach 1,300 in one month in '05. January '09 had 13. We just had our third wave of layoffs in the last 12 months. The first two waves had reduced us by 1 in 3 of our maximum number of employees.
Things are great for renters like me now. A few years ago, I had to move because our apartment went condo. So I had to move from a 2 bedroom apartment to a single but the rent stayed the same. And since I gave up a roomate to do so, I was now paying twice as much for half the size. But then the bust came along and a lot of folks started renting out their houses just to make mortgage payments. And folks stopped buying condos. Apartments became desperate. So I got two free months of rent to switch to a new place. It made it worthwhile to get a two bedroom place just so I could have a den. My old roomie moved in with others in an apartment that had gone condo but they continued to rent from the new individual owner. That mortgage went belly up a year later. So my old roomie became my new roomie again two months after I renewed at my “new” place. I had gotten two free months AGAIN and then got a roomie to cover half my expenses for the rest of the lease.
The economic crisis isn’t as noticeable here, probably for 2 reasons: 1) I live in one of the poorest counties in Texas anyway, and 2) my ‘metro’ area is still in pretty good shape–housing market is up, jobs are being added, and there is substantial growth in just about every sector (Longview, Texas, FWIW.)
Having said that, both of the colleges I adjunct for have record enrollments this semester. Some of these people have been laid off, but it seems like most are young folks who found the entry-level job market unsatisfactory and decided to go to college. I haven’t seen a notable increase in shoppers at the Dollar Stores or Wally World. Probably because most of us shopped there during the good times.
The Girl Scouts were doing crap like that long before any economic crisis. It really burns me that cookies are virtually the only fundraiser they are allowed to do.
Creditors are on your ass immediately if you dare miss a payment due date. There have been times in past years where I was up to a week late with my power bill, no big yank. A few months back, I was late less than a week and I got a notice to pay up or they’d shut me off.
Oh yeah!
Unfortunately, between me and my husband, both of us suck at finances! So sometimes a bill gets missed/not paid/whatever.
In the past, when our phone bill was past-due, they would disrupt our voice mail service. This time, I didn’t even realize he had forgotten to pay the bill until I picked up the phone yesterday to call him, and didn’t have any phone service! :eek:
So then, I hop online, go to their website, drill down through all the levels to “Make an Instant Payment Online”, and get a little pop-up window that says “This service is temporarily unavailable; we apologize for any inconvenience”. Aaarrrggghhh. But I have my trusty cell phone, so I figure I’ll just give them a call. So I click on the link on their website that says “Contact Us”. What do I get? A blank email.
Apparently, the phone company does not want phone calls!
Finally, tonight, I was able to pay the bill. After getting a window saying my payment had been approved (how very, very kind of you, MCI!), I get another window saying it could take “One to two business days” for my payment to post. Ugh.
Yep. January was really bad for us for various reasons, and all our bills got paid, but they were pretty much all 1-2 weeks late. This month, our Internet bill got put in the mail a day after it was due. A day after that, we got notification that if we didn’t pay now, we’d lose our Internet. I called them and asked them to please put a note on our account that the bill was already sent out. I hope we don’t have another month like January ahead of us, we might lose all our utilities.
The parking lot at the local community college is packed. Used to be lots of space there in the evening. Now it’s full with parking on the streets near by.
People bicycling to work in the winter. Not lots, but a couple every day. And this is in Minnesota.
Lines at Papa Murphy’s pizza. Papa Murphy’s is a take-and-bake pizza chain. It’s cheaper then delivery.
More bags of fruit at the grocery store. In the last 5-10 years, the trend seems to have been away from the 5# bag of average sized fruit towards bins of loose HUGE fruit, which is much prettier looking and just happens to cost a whole lot more. I’m seeing a lot more of the 3-5# pre-packaged average bags back in the stores.
Starbucks is closing stores, and Dunkin’ Donuts is planning on opening up a whole bunch of new stores.
