I seriously think our country is in a recession (with financial experts saying it all the time now). But no one "official" has said that we are BUT the term is flying around constantly without the "official" back up (maybe they are sticking their heads in the sand hoping that it will go away ).

Does anyone have tips on how to get through a recession period? The last time I heard anything about the recession was in the Regan years- I was really young and frankly don't recall too much about money stresses or anything- so any tips or advice will be great!

bush is set to speak sometime today about giving money out to singles and married couples(kind of like when we got the 300 bucks per kid thing a couple years back) to help boost the economy so we will see what thats all about....i don't have any major tips except for being frugal...you are right i believe we are well into a recession at this point...its really starting to affect people.

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'The will of God will never take you where the
Grace of God will not protect you.'

I am not a financial expert by any means. Personally we are on a self imposed spending freeze (if we don't need it, we aren't buying it). For instance with Christmas money dh wanted a new sound system at first...then he said let's put it towards the washer/dryer bill. I am just being as frugal as I can be. I suppose people should attempt to have an emergency fund in case they lose their jobs (supposed to have 3 months worth of salary saved up). I have job security so I'm not too worried about that. We just want to pay down debt so we don't have to live paycheck to paycheck forever.

I think in theory if people start buying than that improves the economy, but most people don't have money to blow right now. They are dropping interest rates I hear. I also heard something about rebate checks from the government, but I don't know who will get them.

This was a tip that I read from the Great Depression and I haven't a clue where it came from. People that survived better were people that had other ways of bringing in income into their home. Actually now that I think if it, it was from John Glenns' autibiography I believe. His parents rented out rooms in their home for students going to a nearby college and they sold food from their garden. It always made me think about finding alternatives ways of finding money.

Is recession another way of saying a depression?

Like my grandmother told me about living through the depression "we just learned to live with less".

- when I was talking to my Pappy yesterday we were talking about that- he said this:

A recession is when other people lose their jobs, depression is when you lose your jobs!

So what jobs do you think will go first. I'm not sure I know exactly what happens during a recession/depression.


I watched the movie "Life free or die hard". Oh that scared the crap out of me...

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September Coupon Savings: 11.00 as of 9.1

Reduce your debt!

Save money!

If you have an IRA or 401k, you'll start seeing lots of literature saying you should stay the course in your stock investments so you can 'catch the low and buy more shares of a mutual fund at a discount'. If you truly believe this recession is for a long run - historically we see a significant dip in the economy around the year 10 of a new century - then perhaps sheltering your money is more low-risk, recession-proof investment will help you sleep better at night.

Try to remember, there was a percentage of the population who did very well financially during the Great Depression. They didn't have a large percentage of their income and savings in the stock market and they had depression-proof sources of income. Because they had secure savings, they were able to snap up land and antiques (family heirlooms) at greatly reduced prices. Literally, other people's losses were other people's gains.

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"Poor people work for their money. Rich people make their money work for them."

I don't know much about finance stuff either (trying to learn though ), so, what other parts of our daily life would a recession effect, besides the risk of loosing the job?

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I think the first jobs to go will be the builders, and all the trades that go with it. We are already seeing the effects of it down here. Companies are closing because there is noone building new houses, etc.