What happened to you during the last recession?

I'm sure you're greatful for it now!

 

In the gfc I was made redundant and no other competitor was hiring. So I spent a year reskilling to broaden my employability and entered a parallel industry.

#learntocode can work in some cases but it isn't the saviour many point to when talking about these situations.

 

What happened to me during the last recession is I got less presents for my 8th year old birthday. Fuming.

 

I started a gardening business and it failed so I enrolled in uni. I kept all the gardening equipment and it was really useful so no biggie from my point of view. Both my parents kept their jobs and kept the house although they didn't love 18% (ish) interest rates. The impact on our family was minimal really.

 

That's the point of the thread. There is a view peddled by many that a recession will harm everyone. That simply isn't the case. It doesn't hurt to have some reality every now and then

 

@Perthguy I thought we were of similar ages...

 

You are .

It is just that some of us start working earlier than others .

 

Do you wanna talk about it?

 

7 years of talking with my shrink did the trick.

 

I wasn't even born yet.

 

I was a late teenager but I knew mostly what was going on...

Mortgage rates were very high..parents were every week saying they would lose the house. Had to talk to the banks and were way behind on payments. Houses prices may have been going backwards but nobody gave a ****. It wasn't such an obsession as now, not so easy to get data anyhow.

A lot of companies were scaling back, retrenchments were common, and pretty much all family friends, etc were affected, know somebody who lost a job.

Unemployment was very high, double digits. China was not really in the picture at all as a large resource buyer, certain industries starting to hurt as local manufacturing was starting to die due to Asia (Australia used to make clothes, shoes, etc). Local car makers were scaling back heavily, talk that they would fold. No saviour from any other country possible.

Banks were making loses and talk of banks going under. Banks laying off people as well.

It was the "recession we had to have" said Mr Keating..

After that i went to uni and things.. what was happening in the real world was less of a concern..too busy getting ****** and chasing skirts.

Bands such as Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Guns n Roses, Metallica, Sound Garden were huge..they were angry and **** it all, times were angry, young people identified.

 

I don't act my age

I got my first paying job at 14

 

I got my first bjob at 14

 

I got laid ................................ off

 

I had my first contract at 11. No BS. My grandma was a bit obsessed (understatement) with me. Wanted me to drink a glass of milk everyday. I said sure, pay me $50/week and done. I drew up the 3 sentence contract. We both signed, my sister witnessed it. Contract complete. I had subsequent contracts with her, to wear a jumper in the cold, come home before a certain time etc. Yes I was very naughty as a child. Not muchas changed.

 

Most of the time when I was in my 20s and early 30s was awful for me, so I don't recall what made life specifically awful in 1990. Somewhere in 1989 or 1990, Mr Angel lost his job from a small business, but he was called up to the BIG business about two months later and he has held permanent employment ever since.

We were a sitcom, which the comedians dubbed from being single income, two kids and an outrageous mortgage. Forget the median income households - we were way far below that, whatever it was. Mr Angel found himself a side gig and when the littlest Master Angel was in his second year, we qualified for some seriously helpful child payments from the good folks at Centrelink. The best part I recall, came following the 17% interest rates. Every few months we received a letter from our bank saying that if we kept our repayments where they were, we would pay off our PPOR one or two years earlier. By the time the IRs went back to their usual 12%, (or whatever) we had reduced our mortgage from 30 years to 23. The side business continued for several more years until the old guy we worked for retired.

 

A recession today will be far more painful for many than in the past due to the fact that lending conditions today are much more lenient. And, obviously, credit card debt was nowhere near the level of today.

During the Keating recession, house prices stagnated for years or fell. However, at that time most needed at least a 20% deposit, sometimes up to 30% for a lower interest rate. This gave most people a decent buffer before they fell into negative equity.

So long as people remained employed they were mostly OK. As always, those who had purchased their home more recently struggled the most as interest rates climbed.

The 70s, 80s and 90s were all affected by rising interest rates.

We started building our first home in 1974. Savings bank loan, 35% deposit needed for lower interest rate. Loan interest rate was 6.25%. Gough Whitlam decided the economy was moving too quickly, so raised interest rates by 2% overnight, taking the interest rate on our carefully budgeted loan to 8.25%.

 

We were a young couple with two babies with a mortgage & one income. The recession itself may have only lasted a year, but the effects lasted much longer for us. Hubby was retrenched from his job as an electrician, and even after the recession ended, he still couldn't get work, so we explored several 'self-employed' options.

Although this was the toughest time of our lives, we worked through it together and came out the other side stronger.

Between us we took whatever work we could find. I sold Avon, and delivered pamphlets with the kids in a pram. I sold Tupperware at night. Hubby did hired labour whenever he could get a day somewhere. We took a contract at one time changing airfresheners & sani-bins in toilets. Hubby sold vaccuums, and other items door-to-door. I churned Optus contracts, we both did telemarketing. Eventually we found something that kind of worked & developed a business that sold full-colour business cards & expanded into promotional products, which was started by going door-to-door to local businesses.

In order to survive, we cut ALL spending to the bone. The budget for entertainment was zero. Presents were hand made. Clothing, if needed, was second-hand. We lived on rice, two minute noodles, and 1kg rolls of devon. We would use it in sandwiches, thick sliced on the BBQ, chopped up in fried rice, etc. It was boring, it was monotonous and it was horrible, but I was in charge of the money & there was no way I was going to lose the house, despite the 17.5% interest rates & lack of income.

 

I was working at the same recruitment company I am now back in 2008 and it was tough going.
A number of middle managers and consultants got laid off. I knew all of them though and they all had new jobs very soon after.
Business was rough as well, the company had some 7 figure losses.

Thing now is we are supposedly heading into a recession but have never been more profitable. We are struggling to hire enough people for the demand.

Oh and PLEASE nobody quote the latest SEEK figures for job advertisements being down! All there effort in the past 3 years has been pushed into their Talent Search product so people DONT post job advertisements. A huge amount of recruiters now use this (and to a lesser extent LinkedIN). So this data I am seeing being pushed in the media is complete tripe. Based upon the latest figures I saw which were look 2% I would strongly argue when you factor this in there would actually be a considerable increase in job vacancies.

 

It’s pretty well known this is a choice more than anything else. I wouldn’t be quoting that as any kind of indicator for an issue with unemployment.