What's your plan to survive a deep recession?

[couponsmakecents]

what happens is this:

Let's say my bill for January is $40.00
I pay $50 on the bill so I have a credit of $10.

The next month my bill is $50.00 but they say I owe $40 b/c of the credit of $10. So I pay $60 and now I have $20 credit. For me by paying $10 extra each month I will have a cushion in case there is one month I am short or the bill is high.

Originally Posted by billig Tell me how this works. Is the utility companies holding extra money like the electric company now has a surplus in your account or something? Why not have it in a savings account earning some measly interest in the meantime? Thanks

[texxie]

that's brilliant.

I live in Texas, from like March to October, we're living like bacon so if i could "pad" out account even in the 4 cool months, that would definately help. thanks so much

[neelia]

All I can really do is try to pay off my debt ASAP (about 60% of my income goes to that every month, but it'll be at least a year to pay half of it off unless I start making more) and stockpile a ton when it's free or extremely cheap. It's just my boyfriend and I in our apartment, but I worry about my parents & sister. They just bought their house about 6 years ago and still have a good 24 years to pay it off.. my father decided about 2 or 3 years ago to quit his job and work for himself and.. lets just say he hasn't worked in 6 months and used to bring in about 60% of the income.

Therefore, I am stockpiling for them as well, just in case.

We may go back to live with them @ their house for a few months when our lease is up in September if things are looking rough for either us or them (we could help out by giving them a little for rent, etc).

[justmeagain]

I do not think society will change as a whole.....
Although it would be wonderful to get "back to basics" .....in order for that to happen, I believe something completely devastating......something so drastic I can't even think what it would be........ would have to happen to rid the instant self-gratification issues people have.
The other thing is this recession does not affect certain people. The other day on the front page of yahoo....it had an article about being in the middle of a recession and how this person purchased a suit that had rare fibers.....or something like that and the suit sold for I think 48,000.
Matter of fact, it seems like those that do have money......now is the perfect time for them to even become richer. Everything is basically on sale. Those that do have money can gobble up foreclosures and wait the market out........when the market goes back on the upswing (which it eventually will)....they will make HUGE HUGE bucks selling these homes for top dollar even though they spent dimes.

That being said, I live in Michigan.......need a say more? LOL Our unemployment rate is 10.6 and people are hurting big time--we have the highest unemployment rate out of the 50 states! "Economists agree that the true unemployment picture in Michigan is even worse than the official rate suggests. That's because various categories of the underemployed, such as part-time workers who cannot find full-time work and laid-off workers who have given up looking for new jobs, are not counted in the official unemployment rate." People have been hurting here for a long time, long before a recession was declared and although other states are dire straights too, I know a lot of people who have packed up and left for the other states. There just are NOT jobs here PERIOD. If you do have a job--no matter how crappy the pay, you are very grateful and considered one of the lucky ones. It seems I'm always watching on the news about another factory closing down. No jobs = no people = no money for schools etc etc......Crime goes up etc. I was talking to a realtor about a year ago and he said 70% of the sale in my county were foreclosures! I actually just saw this realtor the other day and I asked him how business was going. He said he has sold more this year by far, then in previous years....however the amount he has made has been significantly less because the price of the houses are dirt cheap.
Anyways......so I think the number one thing people are doing here to survive is MOVING. Even when the economy does rebound, I don't believe it will rebound here until LONG after the rest of the states. We have been on a mad search for DH to find a better job out of state. People can't save money they don't have, and if you were able to save money, most have long drained their savings, lost their homes etc etc. My mom worked at a factory and has now been out of work for over a year. They would not even hire my mom at mcdonalds! That is how bad it is here.

[Mom2my3sons]

I'm very lucky, my city was ranked in the top 10 by some business magazine for best cities to ride out the recession. My dh is looking to make more money than he ever has in one year. We will be debt free as soon as we get out tax refund, sans the mortgage. Property prices in my area are stable. So if my dh gets the promotion he is applying for, we should still do good when we sell our house.

We aren't planning any real changes around here. I will only buy what we can afford, I will continue to save what I can and keep 'extra' expeditures to a minimum.

[Mothernature]

Deleted.

[shelleyf]

bump

[lisa d]

This is a great thread. I agree with most everyone else's ideas like getting out of debt, only buying what you can pay cash for, etc.

One thing I am going to do this year is grow a garden. Last year I did tomatoe plants in pots on the back porch and herbs like basil that I used to cook with and make pesto that I froze. We also planted one cucumber vine and got so many cukes that I was standing on the front porch handing them out to neighbors because we could not use them fast enough. The cost of those few plants more than paid for themselves and boy did the food taste better. It inspired me to do a 4' x 4' area in the yard so I can grow more and other things. This will help our grocery bill be lower. I am a city girl, so we will see how it goes, but I am optimistic!

[smiles]

DH is finishing school next month. He gets his MBA in accounting and will take the CPA exam as soon as he can.

I am stockpiling, and doing the best I can with the resources I have. We try to live as frugal as possible forgoing many luxuries and wants.

We also know we can move in with my parents if times got really tough.

[heartse]

I really like the idea of planting a garden this year. I have tried to do tomatoes in pots, but they never seem to work. I am hoping that if I have an actual garden they will do better.

Otherwise, just going to work on paying off debt. And we have been stockpiling. It's nice to know that we could live off our stockpile for at least 2 months on many things if we needed to... some things a year...