Have your say & ask the experts

are you holding back or stopping any purchases because of the credit crunch?

we are in my house...

i had planned on several purchases this year but having thought it through will wait until Jan to see if the PS3 is discounted and hold off on any other purchases until i know what my bonus will be (next march)....

Trouble is, if we all stop buying then the economy will grind to a halt and even more companies will go bust. Even Mr Brown now admits the spectre of deflation looms large - might be good for a short-term bargain, but not good for the long-term health of the economy. But yes, like everyone, I'm cutting back and flogging as much as I can on ebay.

i know, i watched kirsty and phil on C4 last night and all the experts were saying to save save save.......Mr B thinks we all need to spend our way out of the crisis but the banks wont lend so we cant spend...

i agree that deflation is a possiability as well as very very low interest rates ... which of course the banks either cant or wont pass on..

so thats why i am holding off and stashing as much cash as poss...

but of course where do you put it???!!!

Well we put it into our property and spend £21,000 on improving it. This at least kept the money in the local economy and kept a couple of builders, plasterers, plumber, decorator etc going a little longer. (The builder only needs three jobs like ours every year to keep in business.)

If the worst comes to the worst then we have a nicer home to suffer the recession in, and when (if) property prices go on the ascendant again (they have never failed to in the long term) then our investment will have paid for itself.

The house is ours in 16 months time and the mortgage is laughable (£190 per month) so even if we all end up unemployed then at least we have somewhere nice to eat our Lidl's baked beans on toast!

Andy Clough:

Trouble is, if we all stop buying then the economy will grind to a halt and even more companies will go bust. Even Mr Brown now admits the spectre of deflation looms large - might be good for a short-term bargain, but not good for the long-term health of the economy. But yes, like everyone, I'm cutting back and flogging as much as I can on ebay.

Are you selling your Tag McLaren DAB tuner? If you are I'm interested.

If I ran the country I would instruct the treasury to spend all those billions (now absorbed by City fatcat bonuses) on free/subsidised home improvements to ALL of the UK housing stock.

New double/triple glazing, new loft insulation, wall insulation, new more efficient heating etc etc. It would keep tens of thousands of contractors in employment for years, provide numerous businesses with work making all the required materials and plant and when complete would have the net effect of significantly reducing our dependence on foreign gas & oil.

All those billions of £s would filter around the whole UK economy stimulating spending at every level and some of it would even come back in the form of taxes.

Better than throwing it away on a few thousand already rich people who are going to move it straight out of the country as soon as they get it.

After that I would enact legislation and infrastructure to enable everyone (where appropriate) to be able to work from home. There are millions of people who could work from home and would prefer to work from home but many factors frustrate this revolution.

Millions of people who sit in front of a computer all day in an office. Millions who have to commute to work and back every day to sit in front of that screen all day. Millions of people burning fossil fuel in their cars and taking up valuable real estate in the form of office and car-parking space which all has to be lit and/or heated, air-conditioned etc. Thousands of traffic jams and time (and even lives) lost in this daily commuting marathon.

Working from home (where desirable and appropriate) frees up car parking space, office space, road space, unecessarily burned fuel (in cars and offices) and valuable time spent commuting that could be spent with families instead. (Probably at least an hour a day for most people.)

It would spare millions of people arriving at work frazzled by bad traffic and arriving back at home frazzled by the return journey so they would be more productive 'at work' and more sociable at the end of their working day.

Government and the companies would be required (by legislation) to use the money saved in office space/car parking space/company car schemes/air conditioning & other services to 'enable' home working with a better national internet/cable infrastructure and incentives in the form of one-time free home improvements to enable home-working (a home office that is safe and secure with PC and phones/printer/fax etc subsidised telephone/internet costs and so on) that adhere to accepted office safety levels.

The national daily fuel savings would be immense, companies would benefit by paying for less land/offices/car-parks/air-conditioning/security (even after the initial outlay to provide their home workers with the necessary home modifications). Millions of people would have more time with families and less daily stress as a result of not having to commute. (And the money they save as well.)

If I ran the country I would make everybody advertise on television. A lot. And then I'd make everybody (well, the 6,000 people who matter) watch I'm A Celebrity... by law.

But yes, I'm cutting back, since I don't have a job past Christmas. Otherwise (as noted elsewhere) I'd have had the DB1is on eBay over the weekend........

At least my DACMagic was paid for already.

could you get a job as a santa ... that way you could get yerself a great pressie :-)


seriously....no news on the job front?

i am recruiting for a QA specialist at the mo and finding it hard to get good calibre candidates...

 

Definately not spending as much, I was early victim  of crunch as I was made redundant in January luckily I was over 50 so it was dressed up as retirement. Extension to house built with redundancy money so like chebby - nice warm comfortable home with minimal mortgage - lock the doors and watch movies listen to music till some semblance of normality returns to the world.

 

 

  

timwileman:

could you get a job as a santa ... that way you could get yerself a great pressie :-)


seriously....no news on the job front?

i am recruiting for a QA specialist at the mo and finding it hard to get good calibre candidates...

I've tested lots of pharmaceuticals.

JohnDuncan:

timwileman:

could you get a job as a santa ... that way you could get yerself a great pressie :-)


seriously....no news on the job front?

i am recruiting for a QA specialist at the mo and finding it hard to get good calibre candidates...

I've tested lots of pharmaceuticals.

funny enough not actually a prerequsite for the role :-)

but hey the way its going any CV will do!!

Not to sure about holding back, it's more like I have stopped. I went overdrawn a few months ago for the 1st time, and I didn't notice until the month after when I noticed quite a few £35 charges going out of my account. I get payed monthly and I had a few direct debits go out of my account towards the end on the month, so £35 charge for each one plus a few debit card charges from Tesco's and petrol for the car. It would of been almost £300 in charges if I hadn't noticed and rung the thieving g*ts up. I know it's down to me not checking my online banking enough, but as I have never been overdrawn and use my debit card 95% of the time I hadn't checked for a while.

 After writing a nice letter to the bank I managed to get some of the charges dropped in a "good will" gesture. Especially after 16 years with the bank and the fact they didn't even bother to tell me I had gone overdrawn in the 1st place. If I would of known I could of transfered some money into my account from my savings and not used my debit card.

Add to that almost 2 weeks of unpaid sick leave from work in the last few months, getting my car repaired, and the cost of food/petrol etc going through the roof things have been a bit tight lately.

Now where did I put those winning lotto numbers.

DistortedVision:

Andy Clough:

Trouble is, if we all stop buying then the economy will grind to a halt and even more companies will go bust. Even Mr Brown now admits the spectre of deflation looms large - might be good for a short-term bargain, but not good for the long-term health of the economy. But yes, like everyone, I'm cutting back and flogging as much as I can on ebay.

Are you selling your Tag McLaren DAB tuner? If you are I'm interested.

No trading, please, even if times is 'ard... 

If only my mortgage(s) was £190 per month and was due to be paid off in a year or so.

But yes, cutting back on clothes, takeaways, sweets, newspapers etc and making bigger meals and freezing them for us and the little lad. Lucky fellow has 3 roast chicken and 5 cottage pie/horseradish mash made already this week, with the promise of a couple of pasta sauces as of tonight too

 

I have never saved in my entire life! Once the bills are paid the rest gets spent - no messing about!! I'm on minimum wage nowadays anyway so there are always jobs available if the current one goes pearshaped!