To ask what recession is like and is there any way to prepare?

[sunfloweryy]

Just that really.

I was in my teens for the last one and both my parents were in secure jobs and houses so nothing really changed for me. I barely even registered anything was going on.

Now I’m 27 and bought a house a few years ago with my DH. We were hoping to TTC and upsize next year and have been saving.

I have been reading lots on here that we are likely to go into a recession as a result of all this and I’m starting to feel anxious.

Just interested in people’s experiences of what things might be like on a personal level and if there is anything we can do to prepare ourselves or make it easier?

I was 22 during the 2002 recession and DH was 30. Our house still hasn’t regained the value that it lost during the recession so we’ve had to rent it out and rent a bigger house ourselves but this makes us both a tenant and a landlord and both are shit. We were just getting into a position where we’d paid enough of our mortgage to have a bit of equity and now this 😢. Jobs wise, DH has gone from strength to strength but my public sector job has had a pay freeze then 1% rises ever since. Again, I finally got a slightly higher pay rise last year...

I'm 39 so have lived through 3 but none have really affected me. I'm not wealthy nor grew up in a wealthy family, it's just the way things happen. Not all parts of society fall apart in a recession, a lot of them just trundle on.

I agree with pp. For me the 70s were the worst. 3 day weeks. Weeks without electricity etc. Seeing the fair powering the ships was ‘fun’. We had a village septic tank system - that was fun when it stopped working. Expensive food and not knowing if you could afford to shop from one week to the next. Walking 10 miles with a pram to get to a shop - because you could afford the petrol. Yep fun times not. Really hoping it doesn’t get that bad this time.

I'm in my 40's. I couldn't tell you how all the recessions effected me, as I'm not sure they did, or I just adapted at the time?
I've always been naturally tight with money, never had a loan. I got my first mortgage at 20/21, but always bought a flat or a house that I wanted to live in and never overstretched myself. Always happy to work wherever I think suited me.
Horrible to read what some people have been through in past recessions and no one knows how the next one will go. But I guess there will more than likely always be another one at some point.

Having a baby at any time will got your finances more than any recession.

Either you lose half your combined salary or you pay out £1000+ pcm on childcare. Plus costs go up up up!

A strangely reassuring thread. 🥂

Sorry to jump on the thread- how long do you think it's worth waiting to purchase a new house as ftb?

@yellowpolkadots101 it depends on a number of factors I think.

Whether you’re stretching yourself on the mortgage. What’s you’re loan to value ratio is like which will tell you what the likelyhood is of you going into negative equity.

It also took us a really long time to find a house that we liked. I don’t think I could deal with trying to find a home with a painfully slow market. It was slow before Christmas, anything half decent went crazy fast so everything else just sat around for ages.

We’re still going through with a sale as ftb because I don’t want to put life my life hold.

Don't take on any major commitments/changes e.g. loans, bigger house, new job, start a family etc. Pay off big debts, try to save enough to survive for 3-6 months, in case of redundancy etc.

I was a couple years older than you are
during the last recession in 2008. We’d just bought our first (small!) house together, moved 60 miles away to a new area with a 1 month old. I was made redundant whilst on maternity leave which in hindsight was a blessing in disguise as I eventually found a job in a more secure sector. Luckily DH kept his job but things were very tight financially for us for a good few years. Despite the low interest rates, we’d fixed ours at around 5% for 5 years just before the housing market went south. We lost the deposit we put in the house and then some. Lots of people I knew lost their jobs and their homes and there were a lot of repossessions in our area (new build estate).

I agreed with what someone else said about simplifying finances, whilst we had very little by way of savings, bar the mortgage, we had no other debt and kept it that way. We lived frugally, I got a lot of baby clothes and toys through donations and table top sales. I switched to shopping at Aldi and Lidl and we reduced our meat consumption drastically to save money. I sold a lot of stuff we didn’t need on eBay or gumtree for spare cash (DH used to joke that if it wasn’t bolted down I’d sell it!)

When we had DD2 and wanted to move three years later, the lack of equity meant we wouldn’t move to bigger house. It took us three more years of saving to build up a decent enough deposit. During that time, we saved nearly all my salary and lived on DHs - not easy when paying nursery fees! We sold our old house for £26k less than we paid for it but we bought our current house at the bottom of the market and got it far cheaper than it’s currently worth. Swings and roundabouts.

Looking back, I wish we’d bought a house big enough to ride it out in first time
around so we didn’t need to move.

Today, both DH and I are in relatively secure jobs and we fixed our mortgage last year for 10 years at low rate as we were apprehensive about the impact of Brexit. I do have a car loan with a 8m to go left but we enough in savings to pay it off if needed.

If you can save and simplify your finances, that’s the best way to prepare.

Last recession out mortgage rate was really Low as it tracked the Bank of England so we were ok in that respect . But I would say fix your mortgage now if you can if not already . Depends what sort of job you have as how it will effect you really .

It is going to be awful. Unemployment like the 1970's.
The only thing that will make it better than the great depression is that we have the welfare state now.
Please God if anything good comes out of this whole disaster it is that the poverty issues in this country will never be dealt with as they were during the austerity years. Hopefully it has made every one rethink who should be well paid for the actual work they do rather than their place in society.

I’m getting a bit worried
We have more than enough space, mortgage not too bad but bills are massive.
We have a lot of equity in the house but little savings. Our income could be about to drop massively.
Would we be ok down sizing in a recession.
I guess our house would lose value and could take an age to sell. Did upper end of the market houses sit around for ages not selling in previous downturns?
But then maybe houses we would be looking to buy would also be cheaper?

Loss of jobs are a definete, the students in their final year at uni are going to find it hard to get a professional job as no one will be recruiting, I came out of uni into a recession, got stuck in a minimum wahlge job for years, when things did pick up employer's wanted people fresh out of uni, house prices came down quite alot, that would not be a bad thing now days especially when house prices are at an all time high and no first time buyers can get onto the ladder, it is obviously bad for those that have stacked up on cheap debt due to low interest rates since the last recession, alot of company's have and are now begging for bailouts from the government. I would definitely have a 6 month emergency fund ready just in case ok job loss, hopefully that with universal credit can get you through the worst of it. Cut back on all luxurys and only buy essentials.

I remember the cost of food and petrol was insane during the last recession. Oddly, it was that we struggled with the most at that time.

I used to cry in the supermarket car park most weeks because I just couldn’t make the money stretch to feed the family. I really feel for the families who are already struggling to afford food. If the cost of living goes like it did then, it’s going to be horrible.

I have lived through two major ones. The key is to reduce any debt you have and if you have none, build up savings.
Also in any recession there are still people making money. So don't assume you will personally have little money, you may be one of the lucky ones.

I am living in fear and dread.

I live in a European country which has been completely knocked out by this crisis.

My husband was self employed, but has lost his freelance job. I was made redundant at the end of last year and am finding it impossible to find work.

This virus has put us all in a completely terrible situation. I will always support and obey any measures implemented to tackle it but it feels like we`ve lost everything (and we had little before)

A week ago my nan died, we were very close and I will never be able to say my final goodbyes at the funeral - this is the human element of lockdown which will always impact me the most. So everything else falls into nothingness to be honest.

But yes, I am fully expecting a huge recession, but it's more than I can think about right now.

No toilet paper, paracetamol, flour, eggs or canned goods in the shops. Better git stockpiling.

It’s hard to prepare because this one is likely to be different from other recessions, and it depends a lot what measures the government takes to get us back on track, what happens to our trading partners and whether we end up with a no deal Brexit. It could be a very deep ‘V’ shape. Or it could take longer.

The most important thing I think is to let go of fixed plans for the next 24 months and keep everything under review.

sunfloweryy
I am much much older than you and have seen several recessions and I feel for you.
You are only 27. You will have to put off TTC for the meantime and from my point of view that would be the right thing to do although everyone is different. You have lots of child bearing years to come, keep yourself healthy for that.
It is very disappointing especially if you have worked so hard to buy a house etc.
It all depends on the strength of your relationship.
Good luck thinking of you xxxx

yellowpolkadots101 my friend is a surveyor in the East Midlands. I'm not a first time buyer but he's advising me to hold off for a year.

@yellowpolkadots101 I would say at least 18 months. We still haven't left the EU that is going to send our recession on a worse trajectory still.

It depends on so many factors, what your job is, whether you depend on the state, your age, where you live.

I got through the 2008 crash just fine because I was basically used to being poor, it didn't affect me much although I definitely noticed a reduction in mh services but that is so hit and miss anyway.

Now that we have more money (not rich by any means), I wonder if it will impact us more. My husband's job is secure and I'm looking after our baby at home for now but we live in a cheap country and feel like we'll just about be ok.

To be honest, when you grow up poor, it's really less of an issue in a way. That's how it feels for me anyway. As long as I have a roof over my head and enough food, I count myself lucky.

Echoe what people have said save if you can and pay off any unsecured debt you have.

I think it depends how secure your job is as to how much to stress really (if there is such a thing) in the 2008 crash we got locked into a 6% interest rate and lost money on our first house but it meant that our second house was cheaper.

Things bounce back though eventually, good luck with the TTC

Oh and learn how to cook cheaply if you can't already.

I don't want to be one of those mumsnetters who bangs on about making half a manky chicken stretch for a week to feed a family of 12 but if you are able to make basic food without relying on premade stuff, it helps a lot.