Do you remember what it was like during the 2008 crisis?

[bushproblems]

I’ve seen a few comparisons of today’s economical situation and the 2008 crash. I was in high school at the time so heard a lot about “the credit crunch” but didnt really know what it meant.

Are we in a worse or better position job wise, cost of living etc than my parents were? How were you affected?

Im at risk of redundancy so I’m freaking out about the job market and the astronomical cost of basically being alive!

Lots and lots of people were made redundant. It was a very difficult time and pay increases stopped but I don't recall prices escalating, probably because interest rates were artificially held down. The economy was still recovering when covid struck, then ukraine. We are paying for it now, particularly the cost of furlough and because we shut down and printed money but that was what people wanted and the left brayed for it.

We needed to sell our house. We did manage to sell it, at a huge loss. We had to pay the bank the difference. It was not small.

we considered not moving and riding out the crisis, but that would have come with other financial and personal consequences. In the long run it made sense to take the painful hit.

@RosesAndHellebores how long did it take for recovery to start kicking in?

the fact we were still recovering in 2020 means we’re already on the back foot, I imagine.

The economy hadn't fully recovered. This government has destroyed the potential for any growth in the short to medium term.

House prices had a second coming in 2014/15, in London at least.

I was 14 but I remember people talking about it. My dad went through a few periods of redundancy and I wouldn’t be surprised if one was around that time but I can’t remember specifically. We were lucky that he was well paid so got good pay offs when he was let go.

2007 was the last time a pay rise was actually a rise.

You forgot Brexit.

We lost enough money to make someone ill when I told them the amount.

Basically we came very close to money not working and there were runs on banks and obv a lot of banks and financial institutions failed.

It was pretty bad.

I was made redundant at the beginning of 2009, and I remember being completely unfazed because I’d never had any problems finding a job, and regularly turned down job offers. I went through all my contacts and everyone said the same thing - their companies were making redundancies and not hiring. I was unemployed for 9 months, which was the only time in my life I’d ever claimed benefits. It was a horrible time.

Er interest rates are down, inflation down, net migration down to 20% of what it was in 2023, pensions and allowances up with triple lock guaranteed, NHS on the up with waiting lists down, minimum wages up and the rest - this is way better than I thought any government could have achieved in just 18 months.

We bought a house in 2007 in Cornwall. It's value dropped 30% and took over a decade to recover to the original purchase price. When we needed to move away we had to rent it out as if we sold it we would owe the bank 10k which we didn't have.

The relative values was purchase price in the 170ks falling to 120ks.

Yes, DH was out of work for 6 months. We had two young children and I was on a career break with them. It was one of the key reasons for me heading back onto the workplace and ramping my career up. I couldn't get back into the NHS (I had been a grad schemer in the NHS) and had to switch to a new sector. I went FT as soon as nursery fees were not as punishing (very little help back then) and we worked on me getting to career parity with DH. We managed because we had very little debt at the time.

It changed our approach quite a lot. Our household income is c200k a year now but it's split roughly 50/50. DH paused getting promotions so i could build my career back up. We haven't moved house to a bigger house in the country like many of our contemporaries so that our mortgage is OK on one salary for a time. We have a mortgage and a car loan we keep live for credit score reasons, no other debt. Credit cards paid off monthly and used purely for loyalty points.

DH is on a 2 year fixed contract which ends at the end of this year. We know he may have a gap and we're preparing for that.

The crash changes our lives basically.

I was working in London at the time

So in terms of the reality, knew quite a few people who were directly affected and lost their jobs

But in other way, it was like every other financial event. You could see all around you people who were affected and people who weren't.

I remember going on a work dinner thing to the Southbank centre area and it was a Monday night and it was absolutely heaving. Obviously, a chunk of that will be tourism. But if you're old enough to remember the 90s recession - God I'm old - it didn't feel like anyone was going out at that time. I'm not the best judge because I was a teenager in the 90s recession but a lot of my parents friends were unemployed. My parents were worried about losing their jobs.

We didn't go out in the way that people go out now. I've often said that the term "casual dining" is somewhat lost on me because even now, or even in the heyday when you could get vouchers, I would consider going to pizza express or whatever to be an expense that had to be thought about. That might be something to do with my upbringing.

so I particularly remember that night at the Southbank because it seemed to me that it wasn't as bad as the 90s?

The thing that really sticks out about 2008/9 now ...is that people said we were kicking the can down the road with quantitative easing. I now feel as if we've arrived at the end of that road andI don't know what happens next. Sorry to be pessimistic.

Yes it was hard, but we got through it. Parents had it easier with pick of jobs, cheaper housing. But they did their fair share of scrimping and saving - no holidays or toys.

In terms of an immediate crisis things were worse in 2008.

However we never fully recovered from it, and the effects are still being felt today, but have been squared by poor government strategy, COVID, Brexit and the rise of the consumer class in other formerly poorer countries.

In real terms I would think most people are worse off today than they would have felt in 2008 (apart perhaps from those made redundant). Wage stagnation for all but the wealthy few, and cost of living rises, relentlessly, over quite a few years now, have really made their presence felt.

I was job searching in 2008 after being made redundant from a high street bank (graduate role) and I am job searching now after being made redundant in engineering (project planner / manager).

The job market now is the worst I've ever seen it.

Even with a job loss in 2008, our city centre rent was affordable on just my boyfriend's tiny salary ( we think he was on £18k back then as a graphic designer! ) and food was affordable too. I remember still being able to afford a beer and burger from Wetherspoons. Finding work took a few months but people were hiring in other cities so we eventually moved away for a better life.

Today, I can't find a suitable role within a 150 mile radius! And when I do find a role it has hundreds and hundreds of applicants

😭 there were loads of jobs like mine available in 2023. Absolutely loads

Also back in 2008 the Job Centre was actually a useful hub where normal jobs were advertised.
Now if I go to Findajob.gov.uk (or whatever it's called) there are only NHS consultant roles & teacher roles advertised. It's gone a bit weird

I agree that we never actually recovered from the 2008 crash. I was in my late 20s when it happened and looking back the time before the crash was like the land of milk and honey - lots of well paid job opportunities, decent pay rises every year, well funded public services, cheap travel, a strong pound so most places abroad seemed really good value, at home I could afford to eat out a couple of times a week despite massively overpaying for my first flat. The cost of living didn't start to shoot up until the war in Ukraine, but the economy has been pretty much stagnant since 2008 sadly. I don't know if it will ever recover, and I've long since accepted that I won't be able to achieve the same quality of life that my parents did, and I worry about what the future will be like for my children.

I'd put the money from a house sale into a high interest Icelandic bank and one evening heard rumblings that the bank was going to go under I ummed and aahed and transferred the lot around quarter to whenever at night and went to bed. The next morning i found out, literally minutes after I transferred it, they went under. If I had waited just a few minutes id have lost it all. It took months for the money to appear but it got there in the end.

After this while affair they instigated a guarantee that if your bank went under the government would reimburse the first £70k.

Quite a white knuckle ride for a fair while not knowing if it would ever appear in my account.

The papers were terrifying. I lived in London and had left a job for a few weeks’ travelling then came back and you would have thought it was the apocalypse. I signed up with agencies for temp work and I don’t think I had a day off for six months. I was flexible in what I took and took anything from reception in weird offices on Harley St to moving furniture around and cleaning for events at Banqueting house then waitressing after. I got a mat con off the back of temping and sat while the execs I looked after got out of their high mortgage rates and punched the air with their new low ones.

As ever, in downturns, if you’re young, willing to do crappy things like lug tables around and make more tea than you ever have and stay til 8pm with no warning - and don’t mind where you go, then you can be paid consistently but not a great rate. But it paid the bills. And I learned when you don’t just stay on your mortgage rate even if you have a fee to exits

These days I would hate that and would say not Canary Wharf and I don’t want a 7am start ideally and I need to finish at a certain time and I don’t want calls on Sunday evening to say I’ll get £13 plus holiday to unlock an unfamiliar building when I don’t know who I should let in etc.

from the press at the time you would have thought I had no choice but to sit outside Monument underground station shaking an old can.

@Shedmistress 😱😱😱

i'm so glad you got it

I remember taking my money out of ING direct - something to do with the Iceland banking - but Google doesn't say that it's gone bust so I'm quite confused now

I'm sure they were councils in England who invested in an Icelandic bank and lost money but I'm not sure if I've got the name right. Or if ING was a subsidiary of something else.

I think I opened a regular saver with them because they were giving me 6% interest or something.

We were also moving. We were relieved when we sold, as the prices were stagnating where we were living, but increasing in our new town.

I don’t feel we’ve fully recovered since then either.

I’d forgotten about the Icelandic bank situation.

I took redundancy just before it happened, got a big payout, thought I'd have 6 months off with my kids then walk into another job in insurance as l always had.
That didnt work well, l ended up with a job at Asda after being on benifits for 6 months...

Well I was in my early 20’s and had just bought my first house in the April. The crash happened in September I think. What bad timing that was!

Prices weren’t going up so nothing like cost of living crisis now. Lots of people were losing jobs though and lots of places weren’t taking on new employees. No or very little pay rises. If u were made redundant, it was difficult to get another job.

Cost of living has definitely affected me more in terms of everything costs so much more than it used to, utilities, groceries and generally everything you buy, be it physical or a service.

We spent £20k doing our house up and still lost £14k on it when we sold 8 yrs later. However it worked out well as the much bigger house we bought would have been out of reach if house prices hadn’t crashed.

@PoundsLost "The papers were terrifying. I lived in London and had left a job for a few weeks’ travelling then came back and you would have thought it was the apocalypse"

yes! I had to do a lot of work in the US and one night when I was there, I dreamed that when I got home, there were people living in the streets around my parents house and my parents were trying to feed them. Because that was the narrative.

I think that was the night before I went to the airport and I sat in the airport thinking "what the hell am I gonna find when I get home?"!

I'll add it was a terrible time to work for a bank especially because shops that had "bankers are wankers" on the hangers! I used to take my lanyard off and hide it away because I'd get some glares even though I wasn't a banker!

I actually moved TO London after losing my job because there were loads of jobs available to apply for. I'll never forget my first pay slip and being surprised at my gigantic monthly bonus 😂

I miss being young and having money