Anyone else prospering during this "bad economy"?

[ViviTheMage]

cant say I could live 18 months without me and the GF not having a job...but it has been OK.

I think the big thing is gas has settled around 1.80$ here...keeping everyone happy....for the time being.

 

[Capt Caveman]

Originally posted by: dmcowen674

Originally posted by: AccruedExpenditure
Business is going well, company growing and getting good talent for a fraction of what I would have paid a year or two ago

Wages going down = going well?

We know you're against capitalism. But yes, companies will do better by being able to hire the people they need at lower costs. And more unemployed people are employed.

 

[Gibson486]

I am doing fine....but I want another job. I really do not enjoy it at all....I may have to suck it up though.... not many jobs in the market now.

For next year, we have to be " more effecient". In other words, any one who has billability under 75% will be canned....

 

[jlee]

I'm doing just fine..

 

[HomeBrewerDude]

We're okay and I expect it will stay that way. Both my wife and I have secure jobs, plus each year we do a little more consulting on the side. We're paying off debt and saving. 4 years ago we were month to month....

 

[Engineer]

Originally posted by: Slew Foot
Both the wife and I got new jobs with multiple offers and huge raises. Only a shitty economy if you're a real estate agent or Dave McCowen.

Or if you're working in automotive!

<-----

 

[K1052]

Our company is doing fairly well. We're already pretty lean personnel wise so there isn't any cutting to be done. We are also historically resistant to recessions and depressions.

Not particularly worried about anything just yet.

 

[RKS]

As long as people keep suing or having heart attacks; my wife and I will be fine.

 

[Descartes]

I'm a business owner, and though we've actually increased revenues over the past 6 months, we'd had to let two people go, reduce our wages (two partners) and reduce company investments.

In my opinion, you don't know stress until you're at month end and you've got a call for payroll. Having to float a payroll of even a dozen high-paid resources is enough to bankrupt a company if you can't manage your cash flow. Couple that with slow-paying clients, pushing net 60 on net 30 terms, and you've got a recipe for disaster.

So, we've hit a rough patch at the moment but we will recover just fine. We have surplus to weather the storm.

 

[AccruedExpenditure]

Originally posted by: dmcowen674

Originally posted by: AccruedExpenditure
Business is going well, company growing and getting good talent for a fraction of what I would have paid a year or two ago

Wages going down = going well?

Yes.

 

[Vette73]

Originally posted by: Cdubneeddeal
My salary has increased 10 percent each year for the past two years. My position in the company is stable, however, my company is going through a tough time right now and will be laying people off at the beginning of the year. Most likely I won't be one of them - no attendance issues and I'm a supervisor that is vital to the company. At this point in my life I'm able to pretty much spend whatever I want.

Never over estimate your worth and never under estimate the stupidity of those above you.

Everybody is replacable and even the best earners can be cut at anytime. Look at Circuitcity, they fired all their top sellers when they changed their pay system.


With that said always update your resume every 6 months. Its is much easier to write things down you did recently and never have to worry about missing something.

 

[ggnl]

I was planning on selling my car in anticipation of going to grad school eventually. I'm guessing I'm going to have a harder time finding a buyer now, which means I probably won't get a very good selling price.

Because of that and general worries about being able to find decent part time work, I've kind of scrapped the grad school plans altogether. I guess I'll try again in 2011.

 

[Drakkon]

I'm interested to see how this all plays out. Took out a good chunk of savings and put it int the market the day it hit around 8000 and below mixed between various tech, financial and healthcare stocks. So far no major losses. My 401k and Roth have been hurting (one fund has gone down 80% but i luckily only had 50 shares of it) but now i have upped the number of shares on everything so going forward i see where if anything improves it will be great.
Only problem is I am looking for a new job and the industry I am in (education) is pretty much freezing everything so its been ruff. 30 resumes no replies. Back 2 years ago seemed like every resume I sent out got some sort of reply.

 

[PricklyPete]

I've got nothing to complain about. At the moment my employer is doing well after landing another major contract here in the USA. Money wise I'll be making around 30% more this year than I was last year as long as the company continues to do as well as it is doing (Bonuses and pay increase).

I've also moved my wife and I to a corporate apartment near the client allowing me to rent my house out and nearly cover the mortgage. This is essentially just icing on the cake.

All of that being said, I'm being extra careful and saving up extra cash and placing it in secure, liquid assets in case my company gets blindsided. I don't want to be caught with my pants down and I definitely do not want to cash out on investments that I need to hang onto to ride out the market.

My brother-in-law got caught with his pants down big time. He recently lost his rather high paying job. He has two mortgages to begin with. On top of that he had bought into an investment opportunity with one of his relatives on building a luxury home (worth a couple of million) in the NC mtns in an area that had been quite hot in the past few years. Well they did not finish the house prior to the downturn and the house went way over budget. My brother-in-law had no choice but to invest a huge chunk of his cash reserves in finishing the house banking on his job being around for a while. Unfortunately the house is not selling and now he's lost his job and his "rainy day fund" is much smaller than it used to be. On top of that, the relative he invested in the house with is filing bankruptcy for his home building business. Sure my brother-in-law made some mistakes and over-extended himself, but I still feel bad for them. Hopefully he will find a job soon, but the likelihood of him coming away with a similar job is tough as he worked in a fairly niche market.

 

[CPA]

We're doing fine. Working ourselves out of the debt we put ourselves into the last 5 years. We will be comfortable enough early next year that my wife is going to quit her retail management job and go back to school.

 

[eleison]

It is a bad economy. historically, 10% unemployment is bad -- thats only 1 out of every ten people are unemployed. So for every 9 posting of "uhm, I'm doing ok.." there will be one "I lost my job, or I'm unemployed"... 9 out of 10 doesn't look that bad, but it is bad... yes, I know we aren't at 10% yet.. I'm just using that as an example -- I think we are at 6-7%.

I guess what I'm saying is that this poll is flawed. Its also doesn't account for people who don't have internet. Most people who get affected by a bad economy first are the "poorer" folks... which, I don't think are on the net very often.

 

[tk149]

I think most ATOT'ers are in service or retail sectors unlike me, so I don't expect them to be hit as badly as manufacturing industries...for now.

My own job is pretty secure, but for the 3rd year in a row, I don't expect a raise above a Cost of Living increase, if that. My part of the company is doing incredibly well, but the rest of the company is sucking bigtime. The manufacturing plant for the other part of the company is laying off people beyond our usual seasonal layoffs. Our customers and their customers are all very worried about the economy.

Our costs for raw materials and transportation have skyrocketed. Some have even doubled in cost. China's lockdown of chemical production and transportation for the Olympics has really hurt everybody in the industry. Some of our competitors couldn't even get raw materials at all.

So for me, gas is lower (compared to summer) but still a lot higher than 2-3 years ago. Groceries have gone up a lot. Job security is good...for at least another 3 months, which makes me very wary of incurring any new large expenses. My stock portfolios have taken massive hits, but I'm a long way off from retirement anyway.

Basically, the only bad part for me right now is the uncertainty of the future.

 

[Aharami]

Originally posted by: Capt Caveman

Originally posted by: dmcowen674

Originally posted by: AccruedExpenditure
Business is going well, company growing and getting good talent for a fraction of what I would have paid a year or two ago

Wages going down = going well?

We know you're against capitalism. But yes, companies will do better by being able to hire the people they need at lower costs. And more unemployed people are employed.

good for the employer, but bad for the employee. employees bring in less money when cost of living is forever rising.

 

[NatePo717]

Originally posted by: Engineer

Originally posted by: Slew Foot
Both the wife and I got new jobs with multiple offers and huge raises. Only a shitty economy if you're a real estate agent or Dave McCowen.

Or if you're working in automotive!

<-----

or HVAC.....

 

[TallBill]

Originally posted by: eleison
It is a bad economy. historically, 10% unemployment is bad -- thats only 1 out of every ten people are unemployed. So for every 9 posting of "uhm, I'm doing ok.." there will be one "I lost my job, or I'm unemployed"... 9 out of 10 doesn't look that bad, but it is bad... yes, I know we aren't at 10% yet.. I'm just using that as an example -- I think we are at 6-7%.

I guess what I'm saying is that this poll is flawed. Its also doesn't account for people who don't have internet. Most people who get affected by a bad economy first are the "poorer" folks... which, I don't think are on the net very often.

First of all, there is no poll. Secondly, of course people are doing bad, but I hear a lot of people who are doing "fine" talk about the bad economy. The fact is, it doesn't really ruin many people's lives. Yes, it probably has caused more stress to certain sectors but I just think that it's overplayed. I guess there's no other major world news right now so that's what we have to talk/think about.

 

[eleison]

Originally posted by: TallBill

Originally posted by: eleison
It is a bad economy. historically, 10% unemployment is bad -- thats only 1 out of every ten people are unemployed. So for every 9 posting of "uhm, I'm doing ok.." there will be one "I lost my job, or I'm unemployed"... 9 out of 10 doesn't look that bad, but it is bad... yes, I know we aren't at 10% yet.. I'm just using that as an example -- I think we are at 6-7%.

I guess what I'm saying is that this poll is flawed. Its also doesn't account for people who don't have internet. Most people who get affected by a bad economy first are the "poorer" folks... which, I don't think are on the net very often.

First of all, there is no poll. Secondly, of course people are doing bad, but I hear a lot of people who are doing "fine" talk about the bad economy. The fact is, it doesn't really ruin many people's lives. Yes, it probably has caused more stress to certain sectors but I just think that it's overplayed. I guess there's no other major world news right now so that's what we have to talk/think about.

So with all the independent indicators (e.g., GDP, unemployment rate, bailouts, etc.), you still think the economy is okay? Okay, whatever...

 

[Leros]

Originally posted by: RKS
As long as people keep suing or having heart attacks; my wife and I will be fine.

I bet you two could make more money if you worked as a team.

 

[TallBill]

Originally posted by: eleison

So with all the independent indicators (e.g., GDP, unemployment rate, bailouts, etc.), you still think the economy is okay? Okay, whatever...

All I can offer is a blank stare because obviously my message is not being received by you.

 

[Gibson486]

Originally posted by: TallBill

Originally posted by: eleison
It is a bad economy. historically, 10% unemployment is bad -- thats only 1 out of every ten people are unemployed. So for every 9 posting of "uhm, I'm doing ok.." there will be one "I lost my job, or I'm unemployed"... 9 out of 10 doesn't look that bad, but it is bad... yes, I know we aren't at 10% yet.. I'm just using that as an example -- I think we are at 6-7%.

I guess what I'm saying is that this poll is flawed. Its also doesn't account for people who don't have internet. Most people who get affected by a bad economy first are the "poorer" folks... which, I don't think are on the net very often.

First of all, there is no poll. Secondly, of course people are doing bad, but I hear a lot of people who are doing "fine" talk about the bad economy. The fact is, it doesn't really ruin many people's lives. Yes, it probably has caused more stress to certain sectors but I just think that it's overplayed. I guess there's no other major world news right now so that's what we have to talk/think about.

No, the economy is bad. It is certainly not overplayed. Lots of people just happen to work in idustries where there is a lag effect. Some work for companies who have prepared for this situation, but to come out and say that the economey is just fine...wow.

 

[TallBill]

Originally posted by: Gibson486

No, the economy is bad. It is certainly not overplayed. Lots of people just happen to work in industries where there is a lag effect. Some work for companies who have prepared for this situation, but to come out and say that the economey is just fine...wow.

I never said that the economy was fine. I just said that the majority of Americans are doing fine.