Very. The last time we had one, my field of work was hit hard and many people lost their jobs. I don't have anyone to turn to for help now, so I am thinking that I need a fall-back plan. But, I don't know where to start or how to recession-proof my financial situation.

I wish there was a place to go "advice for moneydummies" that could provides simple answers. It seems the more I read, the more widely the opinions range, and the more confusing it all is...

eeee. I was just thinking about this yesterday... I tend to lose track of the difference between the dollar and the euro (because they were once close to equal), and I was just considering responding to a posted job thingy where the amount was in dollars, and thinking, "well, hmm, it ought to pay the rent at least" - then doing the conversion and realizing, oh, man! Not even! Then I started worrying about the dollar, and the U.S., and all my friends and family. Not that I don't worry about little Greece - I always do (and the politics here sux)... but at least we're not dropping billions (and billions, and billions) on a stupid needless war. bitch, bitch, *tears hair*

A little worried. My husband's business depends on tourism.

I actually hadn't really thought about it until you mentioned it. Great. Something new to worry about it.

Deeply. I'm facing a move to a country in the Eurozone - with my salary continuing to be paid out in dollars by an American company. So a recession (or even just a continuing declining dollar) will make my life over there a bit scary.

A little, we've been trying to sell a condo for six months and haven't had much luck yet. Taking 6 - 12 months to sell a property in Western PA isn't all that unusual, our "new" house was on the market for 9 months before we bought it but we are semi-worried. We've had to drop our 401K contributions down by half to cover the second mortgage. On the other hand, this area has really been in a recession with zero job growth and declining population since somewhere around 1978 so a national recession wouldn't really change things here.

Not very worried.

I don't have a mortgage to pay. My rent, though high, is not outrageous for the area. I don't have kids to support. I have a great reputation among the temp agencies in town. My skills are great; I always get great reviews from past assignments. In tough economic times, the temp agencies want to send the best employees out there in order to compete effectively.

Furthermore, i work in the legal industry. No matter what the economic conditions might be, Americans will always find some reason to sue each other.

Even if recession comes, I can deal with it.

Not super worried. I work in a supermarket, and no matter what, people always need food. Mr. V works for a company that supplies professional flaggers (yeah, the guys you see holding "Stop/Go" paddles) to utility companies (Mr. V is the human resources guy for NJ), and there's always work going on. I feel that we can handle it, come what may.

Not particularly worried for myself; I work for a state legislature, so I'm unlikely to get canned. And I only have me and 3 cats to support.

A short-term recession through the winter may be the best thing for the US, especially if it hits bottom at the end of February. That would give the primaries a kickstart and force both parties to focus on some actual issues.

Somewhat worried, though Houston's local economy always seems to be ass-backwards from the rest of the country. When housing is slumping in the rest of the country it seems to boom in Houston, for example. I figure this is because the only reason people would want to move to this place (think the sprawl, traffic and pollution of Los Angeles, subtract the Pacific Ocean and mountains, then add the heat and humidity of the Gulf Coast and blend well) is strictly for cost-of-living purposes.

School funding in Oregon is better this biennium than in the past.

The only hit would be if the dollar tanks enough, or if stuff goes far enough south that my retirement goes away, but for that to happen, it has to get REALLY bad.

Not that it won't.

Almost completely ignorant of what the term means or the impact it might have on me if one were to occur.

I'm not hugely worried about a recession, as I think it's a certainty.

I'm not super-worried. I don't own a house (ha! to those guys in HR who lectured me for half an hour on the benefits of home ownership), and my field does traditionally well in a recession.

Compared to the 90s, the whole 00s looks pretty bad, but I think we're just evening the keel. Unemployment is still way down, job growth is up, and Bernacke seems to be keeping an eye on inflation. The dollar is weak, yes, but that's not necessarily a bad thing - it promotes foreign investment and can lead to jobs moving back to the US as production orders start to come in.

This whole "housing crunch" has sort of made me proud of our US economy, and the strides we've taken in the past to protect ourselves from dumb dumb investors and speculators. If this sort of thing had happened 70-80 years ago, we'd already be lining up in the bread lines.

I'm worried about my family - my mother's and my semi retired brother's money is all tied up in the market and if it really goes south, holy shit, so do we all go. That will hurt all of us. Selfishly, though, I want to buy a house and if the housing market keeps on tanking, I might actually be able to afford one! A year ago I thought that would never, ever happen and the best I could hope for was a nice dumpster somewhere.

As for me, well, hell, to (mis)quote Catch-22, I have a wide assortment of useful skills that will keep me in a low income bracket all my life, but employed, probably. And I'm used to living poor, which helps.

A little.

Personally I'm in a field that's fairly recession-proof, although my partner's work is directly tied to the economy (shipping). Since the weak dollar means increased exports, and he works in exports, maybe that will turn out to be okay.

We owe much less on our house than it's worth, even with the slump in prices, and anyway, we're hoping to stay in it pretty much for the rest of our lives. The mortgage will be paid off in less than a decade, and Atlanta seems to weather bad economic times well. Like mgl, I worry more about my family than about us.

What jason's_planet said. To the letter. And thanks to helpful family, a very conservative savings policy and some wise investments, the mister is so far ahead on his mortgage that he can basically work in service jobs for the next twenty years and still pay it off, even without my additional income. He drives a ten-year-old vehicle that's reliable, well-maintained and long since paid off, and I don't have one at all. Neither of us carries any credit card debt. We only bother with luxury consumables (like my HDTV entertainment system that I got from a friend) if they're ridiculously cheap secondhand. About the only thing we splurge on is bike stuff.

It's times like these I'm thankful I didn't actually wrangle going to college. Over the past three years, I've watched my x struggle to balance his megathousands of many-times-deferred college loan payments, a brand-new mortgage, recent marriage, kid-on-the-way, and all the associated lifestyle stresses that he so desperately wanted when we were together.

nope. I'm so glad that's not me. I know that sounds mean, and I wish him and his wife the best, but I don't envy them in the least.

I also think, like CitrusFreak12, that I'm fairly ignorant of the impact a total financial collapse in this country would have. That said, I doubt it's in the interests of foreign investors in the U.S. market to kill the goose that laid the golden egg. Properly played, I think China can keep us on their debit sheets for decades at this point - and that's right where they want us, frankly.

Properly played, I think China can keep us on their debit sheets for decades at this point - and that's right where they want us, frankly.

Heh, you mean they haven't done this already?

CF, on the contrary... I think they've had us there for years.

Things like 'independence' and 'freedom' are certainly pleasant conceits, but in the global market I highly doubt they're relevant anymore.

The effect of rising energy prices will still take another month or two to fully "ripple through" the American economy, but $100 a barrel oil means higher grocery prices, gas prices, and fuel oil prices, for sure, by Christmas. A poor retail Christmas season seems inevitable, and that is generally a key psychological measure for many people, that can prejudice consumer attitudes well into spring '08.

For a lot of people, higher energy prices also make their two biggest possessions - autos and homes - worth less, if those possessions have significant energy problems. The market for pickup trucks in Florida is already lousy, and I can't imagine what Ford dealers are going to have to do to move 15 mpg F-150s by January...

I sort of feel like we've been in a recession since 1999. I've built a network for jobs and am connected locally, so I don't think that's a horrendous issue. But I've lived on the edge for so long a recession wouldn't really affect me that much.

I don't know about '99, but 9/11/01 definitely.

I'm very worried. paulsc has said it better than I ever could. However, I think it will take at least 6 months for the ripples to be felt. Xmas 08 will suck worse than 07. An economy that's designed for $40/bbl oil just doesn't work at $100/bbl.

$99/bbl will be the all-time high for oil prices - even higher than the 1980 crunch, adjusted for inflation. We are effectively there already. And then there's the question of Oil markets shifting to the Euro...

The weak dollar may spur foreign investment, but investment in what? Our economy is 70% service-based, and services are quite mobile, especially in the face of a workforce accustomed to a high standard of living, but now the proud owners of an upside-down mortgage on a house in the suburbs that they can barely afford to heat, and a SUV they can't afford to fuel up for the drive to their spiffy service job.

The housing sector has been the one bright spot in the non-service sectors, because residential real-estate can't be outsourced. Building makes jobs, selling houses makes jobs, as does bundling and selling mortgage-backed securities. Selling crap to fill those houses makes jobs, as does bringing freighers full of crap over from China. etc. etc. That entire sector has just seen it's bubble pop. Factor in $100/bbl oil and it is less attractive to go bulldoze another field 70 miles from the nearest major job center. If you build it, they won't come, and they sure won't pay $750K for it - thus delaying the recovery.

Then there's the tidal wave of babyboomer healthcare & retirement costs about to crash down on a smaller wave of discretionary war spending. Alan Greenspan was recently on a book tour, and he was saying that the spending on Iraq didn't really bother him much - it was a raindrop compared to the storm that Social Security could turn into. I'm not much of an economist, but if Greenspan is worried, then I am too.

So yeah, I'm worried.

My hairline has been heading northward since my mid-twenties, so it's not so much worry as it is resignation.








What? Oh, that. Uh, yeah, we're all screwed.

A short-term recession? Sure, probably. I'm actually a lot more worried about the longer term. The economic shifts that are coming with the baby boomer retirement are truly significant. I should say hoped-for retirement; few boomers are prepared financially for the fact that at retirement age many will have another twenty to thirty years of life left, at least some of that time requiring personal or medical assistance and more frequent medical care. They plain can't afford what they're going to need, and others will be paying, both through the increased government-funded programs they're going to demand, and directly to take care of family. Any demographic chart you look at spells some deep change and rather serious economic trouble for this country.

I sort of feel like we've been in a recession since 1999.

Well, the govt's "defined" recession began in early 2001 and lasted into late 2003. But it was a jobless recovery and has continued to be wobbly, with a resurgence in inflation. (In the 1990s there were actually predictions that we had "beaten" inflation for good with Greenspanism.)

There may be an oil shock here. Interestingly we've already seen a local biodiesel plant halt construction since high fuel costs make biodiesel production less competitive. My city's economy is closely linked to a GM plant making SUVs, too, and it's the oldest GM plant still running to top it off. But we have a guarantee of sorts through 2012 from the company, so ...

My freelancing putters along. I still want to get a web company going but it's been hard slogging. I think there may be a cutback in online advertising coming and that's going to put a lot of marginal experimental stuff in the gutter. Is my idea still viable, and recession proof? Not so sure.