Personally, money is tight in our family and DH and I have a "plan B" should something happen to us. I have also noticed the prices of groceries and gas going up, but my neighbor is in construction and was laid off a bit back. We found out a few days ago that he had been laid off and that they were trying to refinance their house either to get the equity out of it, or to get lower payments they can afford on what they bring in now. I am more nervous for my daughter and her DH. He works in a lumber yard and they keep coming in to lay people off. I am afraid on day the axe will fall there and they are about to have a new baby.

It would be hard not to notice gas prices, and I have noticed a slight increase in the cost of certain groceries. I've also noticed that there are more houses on the market in my community and they are taking longer to sell than say, two or three years ago. However, I do believe the media tends to report the doom-and-gloom stories more than what is accurate. I haven't seen too many of my friends or neighbors be affected by "recession" - if there even is a recession.

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That's where I'm at too. My friend's husband wanted a different job in his field and had two great offers less than a month later. My husband still gets calls from recruiters. We went to an upscale restaurant a couple weeks ago and it was HOPPING. When we walked in, my husband said, "What recession?" I have never seen that place so full. We frequently go to nicer places and haven't noticed a a drop in customers. My friends are all doing fine. I guess it just depends on your situation.

The price of gas for one...It is hard to miss, and the housing market...I am personally affected by it right now. We have been on the market for almost 6 months. 6 years ago we sold a house in 5 days.

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For us, the money jsut seems to get eaten up by the gas for our car, and none of the retail/grocery stores near us is hiring (i am in need of a part time job badly, just there is nothing else out by us) and the house of prices has dropped a lot- making me a little bitter- we were the first family to move into our development, and since then they have dropped the price for our floorplan $30,000!!! My husband works for an electric company, so he is pretty much safe with his job- everybody is going to need power still, even if they cut back on everything else. They are even opening a new office that is closer to us at the beginning of next year. And for us, the reason things have gotten extremely tight is the decision to not use credit cards anymore, yet we still have all the payments for our credit cards.

I think my first clue would be that less items are in my grocery cart each week and I am spending the same amount. Also---gas prices. I think too there are so many of the larger homes for sale and even homes in our neighborhood people are starting to leave and move further out or what have you. I really do not think I need a newspaper to see what is going on---

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"Families are like fudge... mostly sweet with a few nuts."
~Unknown~

Gas and grocery prices for sure.

And the quarterly reports on our stock are nothing to brag about!

But working in the loan and realty market, I see first hand what is happening. We have had more foreclosures this year so far, than we did last year.

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I would notice the gas and grocery bill climbing even with my bargain shopping ways, but I am with aliadam, I am not all doom and gloom. We live in a military town so, last time I checked, most of the military still had jobs. In fact, our area is growing thanks to the BRAC bringing in more jobs.

There are a couple of neighbors who have lost their homes due to foreclosure, but, honestly, they were not the brightest in the bunch and I worried about them anyways. They had overextended themselves with bad, bad, BAD loans/rates. (I don't know why people feel compelled to tell me their financial business. I really don't want to know!)

What I have observed ...

~ A few new chain restaurants have opened on the main street in the suburbs. Several independently owned restaurants downtown (some of them were my favorites) have closed down.

~ Major suburb shopping stores and 'strip malls' are still being built while several older strip malls are sitting with lots of store fronts for lease.

~ The local mall (we only have one) is remodelling while at least one anchor store is going out of business. Several store fronts at the mall are empty.

~ The outlet mall on the outskirts of town is barely existing. It has always had trouble being fully leased but now even fewer stores are there.

~ When I call my credit card companies to try to lower my interest rate, they won't budge even though we have a very good credit rating.

~ I now receive advertising from stores that traditionally don't advertise (WalMart being one of them.)

~ An e-mail from hubby's company (he forwarded it to me) that all travel has to be pre-approved and what they will re-imburse for travel is extremely limited. They still haven't paid the expense reports we submitted weeks ago.

~ Like everyone else, food and gas prices have gone up. Some restaurants have raised their prices.

~ Food packaging has gotten smaller. I swear ice cream cartons shrunk again. But maybe that's not a bad thing.

~ We're looking to sell our house. The real estate agent's estimate for our selling price was much lower than expected. Some neighborhoods (the newer ones) have several houses for sale and they've been that way for months. Others (like ours) has almost no one selling - because they can't?

~ Some bills are coming in with due dates pushed in. For instance, bills that used to be due on the 15th are now due on the 12th. If they were due on the 21st, they might suddenly be due on the 18th.

~ Electricity bill is holding steady even though we haven't been home much and I haven't used the furnace for weeks. We don't get a clear dollar per unit declaration on our statement so I can only guess that the electricity rates have gone up. (Idaho pays some of the lowest rates for electricity in the country.)

~ I'm more likely to get a phone call or follow-up mailing from smaller private vendors (especially medical bills) if I have a balance due in less than 30 days.

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"I've been rich and I've been poor but independently wealthy is where it is at."

If you were to judge my my community it would not appear that there is much of a problem. I do not see many homes that have been foreclosed upon. IF you read the legal section in the paper you will notice that its twice as thick as it used to be with threatened foreclosures -- but it is for the entire county not just my area.

I too have noticed gas prices and groceries going up. But I still see tons of people shopping with full carts. The mall is full. They are building new stores all the time. THe resturants are packed on weekends. Unemployment has not risen.

I think much of the problems are longer term investments for our area so people are just riding it out.

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Grace

Wife to Stoney

Mommy of Sarah (8.5), Hannah (7), and John(5)