Riding Out the Recession- How Will You Do It?

Sorry to hear your job is eating up your personal life. My problem isn't that, but I do understand. I hear the market is actually pretty good right now, though I don't have the balls to find out for myself.

Crossing my fingers that I don't lose my job. We'll see if people keep donating money to homeless animals as purse-strings tighten...

Virtually no jobs for me in this town. Lots of work out in California, even if the economy turns to ****, so moving back is an option, I suppose, but would be a major upheaval and it's not something I want to do...

will quitting your job put your visa in any sort of problem state? I would think that would be one other thing to worry about.

If you get in a real jam I'll hire you as a karaoke operator buddy. The money may not be as good as you're used to... but the work is steady and then consider you can take home all of this kind of fox you can handle...

Texas would have been the same job, just with a different customer to interface with. The problem is that the job itself turns out not to be right for me. Lots of mechanical work copying data from spreadsheets into other spreadsheets, and I'm not good at mechanical work. I get bored, lose my concentration, and make stupid mistakes with bad consequences for our customers.


I love the word "code whore" you invented there, even though I feel sorry you feel like one.


No problem with my immigration status. Last spring that was relevant as a way to establish that I hadn't given up immigrating. But now I have an apartment, a car, a drivers license, and a continuous presence in the USA. That's plenty enough to establish I'm not misusing my Green Card.

I'll get back to you about the Karaoke buddy position, and to Squinney about the dog walker. And if working those two jobs doesn't make me enough money to make ends meet, perhaps I could strip at your Karaoke shows?

You've no business interfering with a man's livelyhood. Go back to dog walking.

In 2003 I was making more money than I had ever made in my life, had job security, and was very good at what I did. But I hated having to do the job when I felt it violated my sense of right and wrong, making compromises to appease dishonest people just to get something done, and it was chewing up all my personal time. So, that year I chucked it all and went into business for myself, make a small fraction of the money I was earning, and am loving it though I would rather not work for wages at all at this stage of my life.

The stock market woes have hit our fortunes hard in our IRAs and 401k and we will need to postpone full retirement and making any kind of major life change for awhile until at least there is some recovery. But otherwise, we are living our lives normally and hope most Americans are too. Responsibility and accountability dictates that reduced incomes of course require reduced expenses and more prudence in choices made. But the recovery will be much faster coming if we all as much as possible pretty much live as we always have.

Become a teacher, Thomas. Isn't your fortè physics? I'm sure you'd find pleasure in teaching.

As for the initial question: I don't live above my means either, never have.
Nonetheless, I try to look more closely at grocery items and prices, have postponed all of my teenager's "must have" items until christmas and hope
to resist any impulse buying temptations.

There is that. Some jobs will steal your self estime and self respect.

Teachers are only recession-proof once they have tenure...... I'm worried about next year. I better make myself indispensable this year.

Jane, I know I find pleasure in teaching children -- if they want to be taught. Unfortunately, I also know that I would be frustrated no end to stand in a room with 25 children, 5 of whom are interested in the subject, and 20 of whom are not. (And why should they? Physics is not for everyone.) If I could teach the 5 while letting the 20 play gameboy, deal. But forcing unwanted knowledge unto 20 children who'd rather stay ignorant of physics isn't my thing at all.

Crossing my fingers for your superiors realizing you're indispensible. (I didn't realize your post in the beginning.)

Imagine an illegal Amazon forest clearence fat-cat reading that boomer.

"Dere ya go!" he'd say, "I tol you dayz want innerested een saveen anee fuckeeng trees. Dey jussa wan stop us boys mekin soy an beef at priceez everybodys can affor. "

The forests of Europe were used for keeping warm. Warm is free in Brazil. Let's face it boomer, if you have an unlimited supply there must be a lot more have too. And what you save on energy bills by burning a load of hardwood trees can be used to help put the daughter through deportment lessons.

What an irony. Lower middle-class Americans in a self-sacrificing bout of belt tightening. As the "IN" thing. A status enhancer. Who can think up the most miserly but yet dignified strategy that nobody ever thought of before.

If the first wipe with the Charmin is not so bad you can fold them over and use what was the outside before on the other side of where your fingers are and thus SAVE 50%.

Oh please spendius, you're just saying this because in England everyone
has a fake fireplace with plastic logs and a blinking light behind it.

"We" refers to my family. My family has an unlimited supply of hardwoods. I thought that was clear in the context of my post. I guess not.

If "we" didn't burn it, it would all be thrown away.

What do you mean by "thrown away". Nothing can be thrown away. Things can be removed from the immediate vicinity of persons who find them obnoxious but they can't be thrown away. They can be thrown into somebody's else's backyard I'll admit but not "away" in the sense of ceasing to exist.

I must admit that that is generally true. In fact I have onesuch myself in one of my rooms. It has a fan heater built in and the light is a steady comforting orange glow as if the plastic-style logs are glowing orange. It's housed in a wrought-iron log burning grate which can be quickly adapted to its designed purpose should the juice go off. I think.

But I have no ornaments associated with it such as those toe-cringers you have managed to find on Google and for which I offer you my admiration and respect.

I mean thrown away as in put in the dumpster and taken to the landfill which is where most of the scrap went before we began to bring it home to burn.

Does your house have wood floors or wood cabinets? You wouldn't believe the amount of scrap wood construction of those things create. We have an unlimited supply of that scrap. We burn it in our fireplace.

I refuse to participate in the recession.

I will continue to buy the things I want, to live my life as I do now, and to completely enjoy life.
I am doing some renovations to my house, I just bought a new truck, and I have no plans to change anything.

If everyone starts to panic and changes how they live because of their fear of a recession, then there will be a recession.

Its a self fulfilling prophecy, and I dont intend to participate in everyone elses worries or concerns.

With the price of food so high, most Americans may benefit from reduced diets.