Can anyone remember the 2008 crash?

[Camouflags]

I was too young but can anyone tell me what it felt like before it crashed? Why did it crash? What crashed?!
Personally how did it affect you? Is this worse so far?

The banks had to be bailed out in 2008 or there would have been anarchy. We wouldn't have been able to draw our cash, use our credit & debit cards at cash machines, online or in store. The shops would be way worse than they are now. How long would utilities be available? Once you ran out of the petrol you had in your car, there'd be no more.

I still shudder when I think how close we came to that. Thank goodness for Gordon Brown, his solution and leaders of the rest of the affected countries for preventing it. Yes, the recession was bad (I'm from the north east, it feels like it's still going on) and austerity was and still is awful, maybe unnecessary; it could have been so much worse, though.

We had just bought our house before the crash so were instantly in negative equity. My employers held out for as long as they could but I was made redundant 6 months later with a tiny payout.

It was a really tough time for us financially as we had no savings to fall back on as we had sunk everything into the house purchase. After bills and food I had £15 a month 'fun money' for children's play groups, coffees, clothes, make up. We got by and made the most of any free activity and hand me down clothes and toys.

Thankfully there wasn't too much of a gap before I got a new, better job and we didn't need to move so the negative equity didn't affect us. The house is now worth almost double what we paid. For now.

It all felt very sudden and due to strategic financial incompetence of bankers who should have known better. This feels way worse as it is looming but there doesn't seem to be any human quick fix as we are at the mercy of nature.

This is far worse. 2008 was horrendous lots lost their job, this will be worse people will lose their jobs, social mobility, health and home's.
I wasn't very sensible during the last boom I blew lots of cash, I'd big plans for this one but it didn't last very long, back to poverty.

I lost my (fashion retail head office) job yesterday. Been there 13 years so obviously we just made it through 2008, but we couldn't survive this time. All our suppliers overseas closed down.

I barely noticed the 2008 crash. We had bought a house in 2007 and sold it in 2011 for 30% more (were very lucky). We were also young so had very little in pensions and investments.

I was working for a bank in Canary Wharf. It was unbelievably busy as they'd just bought Lehman's and I work in IT - we got a treasure trove of flipping amazing systems to integrate. It was exciting and my field was chock full of work. Before the crash the economy felt overheated and disconnected from the reality of people's wages. People viewed fresh flowers as a basic expense to decorate their rental flat. We shopped in a deli once a week and bought truffles. I was 28, it was ridiculous.
This is all completely different, although arguably the negative interest rate problem meant we could have been heading for a crash anyway. I'm hoping the degree of hangs and disruption eventually leads Tia recovery based on stronger foundations than the slightly fake recovery since 2008 (QE was never real).

For me, the major difference is the speed at which things are happening.

People are talking about 2008, I remember things changing (or starting to) in 2007.

It wasn’t the only thing on the news and it didn’t all happen at once. This time is different - it is affecting everyone at the same time and in a very short space of time which is likely to make recovery more difficult.

Not sure why anyone needs to remember the crash ? We're still paying for it. And will be for a long time.

Mind you, at least the bankers bonuses weren't affected. That would have been really bad.

This is worse. I just remember being skint all the time and struggling to find work. Watching people on the news finding out their jobs had gone and having to take boxes of belongings home the same day ☹️

The awful early 90s too when I went to work with a mortgage interest rate around 13% and got home to it over 15%. I don't think it lasted long but it was terrifying. I think it was called black Wednesday . I honestly was suicidal, I didn't know how I was going to survive as at that time I only had £10 a month left after absolutely essential expenditure, I could never go out socially or even buy a paper as I felt I needed to save the £10 for emergencies. I was already in negative equity following a difficult divorce. Later I sold the flat at a loss and took out a personal ,loan to repay the shortfall to the nationwide. And rented a crap flag with no heating and mice. But I could eat.

sincerely hope everyone manages to keep their homes over their heads this time

Recessions happen about every 10 years or so. So a recession is nothing new. What is new is that this virus can kill you. So in a recession you don't gets state schools closing or lock downs.
But people being made unemployed, being in poverty and losing their homes is sadly nothing new.

It was awful, just awful, I feel sick thinking about it. I worked for a furniture manufacturer whose big customers were house builders. We announced redundancy consultation within days - we’d just had 2 people leave our dept and one had gone travelling so we escaped it but it was a very different landscape no budgets to do anything. DH worked in public sector and did have wage rises in that time - despite what people say on here.,

We were in the process of buying a house as things were starting to crack, prices had already been falling and we paid a fair price but were still plunged straight into negative equity - we shouldn’t have done it, had it been a couple of months later we’d have pulled out. We were only really saved by an amazing base rate tracker mortgage which pur very perceptive mortgage advisor pushed us into - forever grateful, it meant we could renovate the house and when we wanted to move 7 years later we still made a few grand on it as it was no nice. Not a lot when you consider the previous owners made 80k in 5 yrs. Friends who’d bought in 2007 beg of 2008 were left in such bad negative equity, they all lost money in some cases lots and had to be helped out by family when it came to moving to a family ho once we’d started having families. Lots of renting out smaller flats to rent family properties because they couldn’t sell.

I feel like my adult life has just been very anxious and not feeling secure financially or in a job.

Poor FIL had an obscene amount wiped off his pension it caused him a lot of depression he ran his own successful business but can’t live very comfortably in his retirement like he should have been able to.

@hammeringinmyhead I’m so sorry

This is far worse. In 2008 our youngest son was just 1, I had moved jobs to the private sector, admittedly for a stonking pay rise, but then spent the next 3 years trying to avoid redundancy. I left in the end for where I work now. My original job would have given more security at that time.

With this, if redundancy happens, I have no control in getting a job quickly, as nobody is going to be recruiting until this is over and that is dependent on how damaged the economy is.

At this point in time, I can barely go out as I'm very high risk and if I catch this, it will be a pretty much guaranteed death sentence. Whilst I'm at peace with dying (my life is going to be shorter than it should anyway), I have a wonderful wife and two boys I would never see again.

Whilst 2008 and a few years after were tough, that kind of thing has happened before. The situation we are in now is a complete unknown for pretty much all of us.

Totally different! I work in customer service in financial services and did then as well. This is far scarier and has a much wider impact across every one in society. Back then it was business as usual for us and now it’s frantic contingency planning as the country prepares to grind to a halt.

The awful early 90s too when I went to work with a mortgage interest rate around 13% and got home to it over 15%. I don't think it lasted long but it was terrifying. I think it was called black Wednesday

I can remember that. When the mortgage rate was announced, I can remember seeing the colour visibly drain from my mothers face. That's when I knew it was bad. It didn't help I was at University and they were helping me with money.

Should I be taking out some money and keeping it in the house just incase?
I don't like the idea of looling at my bank balamce and losing all my money. Or does that not happen to smaller amounts like under 10k.
Really man i feel sick and scared.

This is far worse I remember 2008 but that was just money not peoples health and the fear of the ultimate penalty

I remember it very clearly -- I was living overseas at the time and it was very scary because we were worrying about not being able to be repatriated if the economy totally seized up.

This is more dramatic and scarier because there is a whole section of the economy for whom income will - already has -- dried up overnight. So the short-term shock is worse and this is why the government has to basically nationalise a lot of the economy.

I think over the medium to long term, though, and depending on how the government handles things now, there's a chance for us to bounce back relatively quickly. It will require a vast amount of support for people whose livelihoods have been removed though.

We're basically going to become a totally socialist government for at least the next year.

DH said last night that the Lehman's crash was a kids tea party compared to what's happening now.

I don't fully understand when he explains the intricacies of what's going on and why to me but I've never seen him so stressed.

He had the same job during the last crash.

He's one of the essential workers still at his desk today doing behind the scenes stuff to try and mitigate what's going on. It's not just teachers and nurses dealing with this.

The economy crashing like never before will have a much longer lasting effect than this virus.

Yes. Dh was made redundant when I was on maternity leave with DC1.

This will be worse.

This is nothing like it. This is much, much worse. In 2008 people had less money to spend but could still spend what they had. This time round we won’t be able to spend - nothing will be open other than essentials.

Hell yes. DH went from some travel to meetings overseas to needing to spend 2 consecutive weeks in South Africa and 2 weeks at home for 4 years (left on a Sunday morning, arrived home Saturday lunchtime 2 weeks later, so we had a single weekend a month as a family and under huge pressure to spend that visiting family 2.5 hours away). I had DD in primary school, we got a series of au pairs to help it work out. I had moved to a new role at work, which was very frontline in the response so a lot of long days, early mornings, late nights even though DH was away.

It was extremely worrying at the time. But it was nowhere near as sudden, nor as catastrophic for the entire economy (globally) as the current situation.

We were lucky though, we both continued working FT, while pay was cut for us both we still had sufficient, and could pay the mortgage and put sufficient food on the table.

Sorry OP I can't help replying with some exasperation here. If you genuinely don't know what 2008/9 was like, there's copious literature about it. The causes were multi-faceted and grew over a long time (the 'boom') with the 'bust' happening very rapidly in some cases, and then continuing for many years. And as PPs have said, many people have continued to suffer since.

In my case, in early 2009, I worked in a senior professional job in a consultancy connected to the building sector; I was pregnant with my second child in a difficult and failing marriage. I lost my job overnight, with no warning (it was early in the crash period). I am not the most unlucky of people - I held onto my house; ultimately my marriage ended (we had 3 children by then), and I spent nearly 3 years trying and failing to get work, on my own with very small children and no support. It was truly truly awful. I will never forget it. I eventually got contract positions, thankfully, and exactly 9 years after I'd lost my job I finally had a permanent public sector role which is secure.

In this current crisis, I am so so sorry for those businesses that will feel an immediate impact, and recognise how lucky I am to have a salary, that I can continue to pay by childminder while in self-isolation (Ireland) so that she is also secure, as I'm so aware this is not the case for many.

But this is an ENTIRELY different situation. Clearly more grave, as it is a public health crisis and people are very sick, and some are dying. From a financial point of view, yes, it will affect all economies. But it's not caused by an overheating of the market that will take ages to rectify. Based on modelling, there will be a return to (some sort of) normality) by the summer. Many people will not have been spending (as they are isolated) but once they can, they will again, as they have the money.

In Ireland, approaches are being put in place to cushion this short-term blow; for example, aid from Government, mortgage moratoriums, freezes on certain payments and taxes.

You cannot compare the 2 events, at all.

There is no point in getting hysterical about losing all your money - why would that happen? It never happened in 2009 either - people lost money on investments not the actual cash in their bank.

This is another indication of how poorly UK authorities are handling the situation; I'm not saying Ireland has all the answers but because there is complete clarity about working arrangements, school arrangements and social interaction, people are already finding a new way to work, where possible, some people are coming up with innovative solutions and there is some support for those adversely affected by the events, which is awful. But it will be short-lived (in relative terms, not of course, if you are in the middle of it, I know) and can be overcome in some months.

Finally, the banking systems overall are much more robust than they were in the 2000s. Thank Goodness.