"Credit Crunch" - the monthly £ impact on your family

[LadyMuck]

Keep on seeing media stories, or non-stories or wannabe stories indicating that families are cutting back on school fees etc due to credit crunch, so I was trying to work out how much the "credit crunch" was affecting people that I knew.

Now if someone has lost their job, then that has huge consequences. But relatively the numbers are still few, and even the worst estimates are less than 1 in 10 being affected in this way.

So I'm guessing many people are being affected by the increase in food costs, heating and fuel. I think that without changing any of my habits I could have been up to £400 per month worse off (£100 heating/£200 food/£100 petrol). And I've benefited from the drop in mortgage rates, though will have lost on paper at any rate in terms of some investments.

We are fortunate that we can absorb £400 per month, and I know many people can't, but in terms of paying school fees, this increase in costs wouldn't mean that anyone I know would be pulling kids out of school soon.

I assume that self-employed people could be seeing a drop in income depending on what they do. But to a family with one or two wage-earners, are there other cost increases that I've totally missed? Our major impact is really the uncertainty both for jobs and investments, but that hasn't yet impacted our income or expenditure.

So without wishing to either dismiss the struggle that families will face due to these cost increases, or if they face redundancy, am I missing some huge implication from the current credit crunch?

i'm doing ok so far - althou it helps dramatically that I have just got a new job (only 16 hours a week that's paid) but it's better than before - now we can live as opposed to exist and i've stopped fretting about the heating only being on for 2 hours a day - we can actually have some heat in the house.

also well happy with the lower fuel costs. esp as I have to drive 30 miles extra a week to get to work & back.

my rent has stayed the same, food i'm finding with the extra money we don't have to worry so much (ie only have £20 for a weeks food, or only eating meat when we go to my parents house)

if however I did loose my job and went back to how it was before on IS then i'd really struggle again.

I agree with expat credit crunch is media speak that sounds like a nice breakfast cereal.This is a recession and a depression cannot be ruled out.This will be a lot worse than we are being told and the short term reduction in a few bits at the supermarkets will soon mean nothing

I agree the longer this goes on the worse it's going to get and the more people it's going to badly affect.

30,000 people have just or will soon lose their jobs due to the collapse of Woolworths. Add to that jobs lost from MFI, Zavvi, Adams etc and that's a huge number. Unfortunately there will be more and I'm sure have already been a number of lower profile and smaller businesses which have gone out of business leaving lots of people looking for jobs and families struggling.

I think a lot of people are being far more cautious when it comes to moving jobs/houses/spending money. You can't help but feel less confident about spending money when all you hear in the media is about the economic crisis

As far as monthly impact goes I think it'll be those less well-off who'll be hit first as they can't absorb a drop in income or increases in prices. And I'm talking about people struggling to pay for things which most of take for granted like food and heating, not just having to cut back on luxuries.

I'm selfemployed and down by about £250 a month due to work dropping off.Customers who have lost their jobs or rely on investments for their income can't afford me anymore.

I'm really hoping work picks up this year,but have a few other irons in the fire just in case it doesn't.Luckily dh has a fairly well paid job,so we should manage o get by.

Our income has not gone down.

Our expenditure is probably less because of the reduction in mortgage interest.

We have areas where we can cut back if we want to.

We are not seeing a big difference in the affordability of school fees.

on balance we're better off now too, as we have a tracker mortgage and lower fuel costs than a few months ago (only got our tracker in August before then we were screwed on a variable rate).

Our jobs aren't too secure though - dh's firm has already made redundancies and we have a vastly reduced equity pot in our house.

Our equity has gone down dramatically (I assume). Our house is worth less, as are our shares. However, this does not affect us unless we plan to sell.

Thought I heard the recession being mentioned by Gordon Brown

We are self employed and whilst we have not been affected too much income wise (one or two clients have lost jobs and so have cut back).

Our biggest concern is that our rent has skyrocketed over the past 3 years first by 30% then by 20% and we are desperately looking to move premises.

We have few personal debts (small overdraft and £60k mortgage.)

we are down £2K a month as DH's wage rate has been cut...

I wasn't going to go back to work myself for a while but now I have to...

and childcare around here is shit...

GB prefers to call it an "economic challenge"...

But those of you who have 'gained', are you spending the extra money or saving it? It needs to be spent to get the economy going, doesn't it?

We've not been affected in a material sense as yet, but if I were to be made redundant we would be up shit creek as I don't think we could survive long on jobseekers' allowance and DH doesn't work

but no other effects so far, we haven't even had our gas/leccy go up as yet although I know that could still happen

It's affected us in that our builder was all set for a loan to keep his cashflow going, which got yanked at the last minute, so despite having £500,000 in work lined up, he couldn't do the work and vanished.

Leaving me 9 months pregnant with no roof, and MrNC working every minute he's awake project managing the loft conversion, finding workers and materials himself. A is now 4 months and we still aren't waterproof, despite spending an extra £10k on extra work - can't go any faster as we've run out of savings so have to wait for payday each month.

So glad we took out a tracker in Nov 2007 - once the 1.5% cut kicks in this month we'll be better off and should be able to finish most of the work in the next couple months. Have to admit, if we were going to spend our life's savings, now is the time to do it...

I guess we are better off due to cheaper petrol and £250 off our mortgage, our gas/elect has risen but I find it too difficult to compare prices of utilities to know the real loss/gain.
We haven't benefitted though due to smp over the last year and now part time wages, so we are ok (if our jobs last) but not as strapped as we would have been 6 months ago.

i've spent and am saving as well - but not on the things gorden wants me to spend on - mines gone on getting on top of my bills, ie gas/elec/water etc.

once all that's on top of tbh I might do a treat out with DP a bit more, might even manage a £9.50 holiday this year, but over all no not spending on big stuff.

tbh I want to start a xmas club off this year so i'd rather keep money back for that as I think i'll need it come next xmas.

DH is self emplyed - and I work for him.

Yes the "credit crunch" has had a huge impact on us - but them we are dependant on the ecomomy. Whether or not we can ride this out - only time will tell. [optimitsic]

interesting to see how many on here are much better off because of being on tracker mortgages. I wonder how much that reflects the situation for the country as a whole? we are first-time buyers (well, second-time, but renting now and have been for several years), and so get no benefit from interest rate reductions; in fact we are penalised since our savings now earn basically no interest, and there is no such thing as a cheap tracker mortgage any more. banks are charging about 5% on up for any type of new mortgage at the moment, and paying no interest on deposits held in savings accounts, so ftbs are still very badly off. maybe no one really cares about this, though. obviously not an issue for the Govt. Renters as second class citizens...hmm. New Labour indeed.

We fixed our gas/electricity prices to 2010 this time last year although I feel we are still wasteful so need to concentrate on cutting back on usage. Our car fuel (lpg) is now 35p per litre and comes down in line with petrol prices, we do use some petrol as well so if I pop £10 in then I see the benefits. We sold our house in march and live in rented accom now so have banked our equity but of course interest is rubbish unless I want to lock it in which i dont. Food is ridiculous although I am shopping smarter I find the price of certain items ridiculous. A few months ago i could buy a large tin of pink salmon from Sains for 80p - its now £1.58!!!!!

riven......have you had a £25 cold weather payment? there is a credit of the same amount in my bank,but can't tell where its come from yet? could that be it?

i watched that programme on bbc1 last night about house reposessions....shocking!! really felt for the poor couple moved into a caravan. locksmith said he was doing loads of reposessions every week!! made me wonder where all these poor families moved on to!