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What a Recession will Mean for Us- Lessons from the Great Recession
I can remember 2009 like it was just yesterday. The Great Recession hit and it was so bad that it shut my town down. I was slated to begin a job I was a college intern and my plans were completely uprooted. I learned alot during the Great Recession of 2008, and wanted to convey some lessons learned and words of advice.
The Summer before the crash of 2009, I was an intern and I was getting ready to take a job with my dream company. I was an intern for two Summers at my dream company close to home and nearby a fun mid-suzed American city. I had a great boss, I had an awesome workplace, and the facility produced a great product I believed in and that Summer we all got together and we talked about how it would be when I signed on. Gas prices were over $4 it's a big indicator something was a mess at the time so excited to Begin work I dived into my studies and my final year in college.
It was an April of 2009 when I called my boss and I was very excited and I asked him when I could start and he told me that that wasn't a possibility. He let me know they were shutting down the plant that they were cutting shifts, that it was no longer 24 hours a day no longer 7 days a week and they were shutting down days at a time. It was at that time that the recession became real. I was poor I was a college kid so I never really understood the gravity of the situation u til I graduated into the Summer of 2009.
Fast forward to the Summer of 2009, during this time I had a job with the Federal Government I was able to get out of the recession's storm. I' moved to a place I'd never been and it was exciting- we flourished from the federal funds but I saw all around me what happened during the recession. People lost their jobs, housing crashed, the stock market crashed, people were very glum and cynical and upset.
There was just a feeling of gloom and of doom in society and in the culture and it really pervaded everything from music to even movies and and just everything- it was everywhere as a nightmare. I went to visit my parents and their city was struck hard it was really depressing to see people lose their houses and for sale signs and foreclosure signs everywhere.
Fast forward to 2012- the recession was mostly over- jobs came back and people were mostly gotten over it to a certain extent. As much as the relief was felt, there were deep scars in the city that I grew up in where I left when the federal money was gone, there were left scars there too. We felt we narrowly survived, and learned that we could never be too comfortable in an economic sense again. Ever.
I learned a lot of lessons during the recession. It only lasted for about a year and a half on paper but in actuality it touched the region I grew up for about five long years. The first lesson I learned is that you do not want to be without an emergency fund if you lose your job that's it for a while. The next thing I learned is during recessions deals are real if you can keep an income source. You can scoop up deals, and we're talking cheap houses stocks collectibles cryptocurrencies whatever you want to get even things like toys can easily be picked up. You can get set up for life during a downturn. Keep that in perspective.
The bad thing about boom and bust cycles that produce deep recessions is that there's really a zero-sum game going on in the background of our economy. The pie keeps expanding but in actuality a lot of people get caught up and a house that's too expensive overextending yourself into stocks taking on risk puts you at a disadvantage and if you lose someone else wins
Likewise, if you win and you take something great does someone else had to lose. Keep on pushing and take a survivor's perspective.
We may be heading into a recession at the end of the year- that's kind of what it looks like on my end I'm seeing a lot of slowdowns and if you look at Zillow you can see a lot of housing price cuts. People just aren't spending the money they used to and it looks like we've got a lot of situations where credit card debt is increasing at a highest rate that it ever has. They say it's good to be greedy when others are fearful I don't think we're there yet I think we got a while left to go.
My suggestion to get ready is to pay off debt you can, get yourself an emergency fund, and pay off as much debt as you can make sure that you're a star perfer at work. You don't want to lose your job during a recession and end up on unemployment. I can remember seeing lines a quarter mile long for someone who would work in a safe way someone who would work at a movie theater I remember seeing my old high school friends working minimum wage jobs it's real.
Stay as positive as you can do not fear losing your job, but be cautious- do not fear the crash and instead embrace life. Be the best star performer you can be invest in gold invest in things that are skills build your skills- gardening skills, build up your carpentry skills, build up your ability to fix things- be a handyman any kind of first aid skills. Those are the things that are going to pay you during a recession if you're a tradesman, that's a great place to be. Try to become as versatile as you can. Wishing for the best preparing for the worst that's my attitude and that's how I'm going to keep it.
Posted on Hive and Blurt.
