Anonymous wrote:That's funny, most of the people *I* know in bad financial shape had plain old fashioned bad luck. Health problems, layoffs, a child with autism who needs expensive therapies and a parent at home, etc.

There are some serious assholes on this site.

Agree, pp. I really like OP's post!

OP, is your business in a sector that has a high-, middle-, or low-income customer base? To what do you attribute your particular decrease in customer spending? Are the low-income customers who are seeing some benefits stripped away, are they middle-class customers who have lost their jobs, are they high-income customers who are faced with higher taxes? It would be interesting to know what sectors are faltering in this "thriving" region.

There are a lot of people struggling even in the DC area. My husband works for a welfare program and he gets all kinds coming into his office that have lost their jobs. He gets at least one person every day who lost a high five figure to six figure job. Unemployment only lasts for so long so and if you are unemployed long enough any savings you have will be gone.

It occurs to me that a cool thread would be: how did you get yourself out of the hole? True stories as to what worked. How bad it got, etc.

OP again. I read a great article in the post magazine a few years ago about a guy who went home to visit his parents, who live on a farm. In the course of his stay, he emptied a mouse trap of its victim, and later, when his parents asked what he did with the mouse trap, he said he had thrown it away. The look of disappointment and horror they gave him was the departure point for this very well written story.

The author described his parents way of dealing with money, probably the result of hard lessons learned by the depression, which was: save, and buy only what you can afford. They build their own house, and added to it when they had saved enough to do so. They lived below their means, and as their means grew, they did not change their ways.

As a result they had what few people now have: substantial savings, no debt, peace of mind.

The hard lessons I personally have learned will change everything about how we spend in the future, how we teach our child to plan for the future, and hopefully if its too late for it us, it will still not be too late for her to know this peace of mind.

The book "Millionaire Next Door" talks about prodigious accumulators of wealth, who live cash only, buy only used cars (cash) spend as iittle as possible and put away as much as possible.

I think this is going to the way people are once again forced to operate. The ones smart enough _and_ fortunate enough to be able to convert to this model pre-emptively will reap the most benefit.

To the PP who felt it necessary to comment that my calling or thinking about something as a windfall is "the problem": you do not know _any_ thing about my specific situation or type of business I have and therefore you cannot assess "the problem" based on anything other than asumptions about my case. (I didnt post to discuss my case anyway. This is way beyond _me_. This is our nations and indeed our entire world's problem, not my personal problem.)

To the PP who felt that "most people" the poster knows who are in bad situations made bad decisions to get there because of ignorance or whatever else, you simply are looking at too small of a sample size.

There are forces beyond one's control that can come in and change everything. And any of you who in the back of your minds think that could happen to you, it could. But then, I would think most people looking at this post might in fact be the very people I wanted to address: people already being hit super hard. Which is _a lot_ of people, and depending on how far you pull out the lens, most people.

If you're doing great, and make more money than you need, and spend below your means, have no personal debt or consumer debt, own your property and cars outright, have actual net worth and have all the retirement plans guaranteed and set up and a great health care plan as well as a supplementary catastrophic plan, then CONGRATULATIONS.

Everyone else: take this time to learn what you can so that you never find yourself in a bad spot, again, or ever.

Some middle class people in the USA with long-term underemployment/unemployment, etc., probably "feel" like they are living in the poor house these days.

Yeah, it all depends on your perspective. I teach ESL and most of my students have very low paying jobs (restaurant worker, fast food, or daycare assistant teacher, for the more advanced english learners). They can't afford to buy a house, they rent, they mostly use public transportation (a few have older cars). But because their situation here is better than it was before, they don't feel that they have it too bad. I suspect not much credit is available to them, except payday loans.

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Thanks to all of you who understood.

Regarding the poorest of the poor, I did mean specifically relating to credit. Without credit most of us would be able to afford very little including our homes, which are, after all, mortgaged. Usually.

In other words, if we could buy ONLY what we had salary or money to pay for, it would be a game changer. Most of us would be renting, and taking public transport. We would have to save for things we wanted to buy- and that would mean we could have homes _eventually_ or cars _eventually_, assuming we could save.

In no way was I implying that the worlds poorest are close to OUR situation or vice versa. Their plight is sadly true of LARGE populations of the entire world. It is on their backs that much of the worlds wealth is built. Its abjectly unfair, and cannot easily ever be fixed.

Im just saying: I dont kid myself into thinking I have alot more money than they do. I just have a lot more credit and options.
And Im no more deserving of it than any of them. [b][u]

Good points...especially that the world's wealth is built on the backs of the very poor.

OP here. Thanks to all of you who understood.

Regarding the poorest of the poor, I did mean specifically relating to credit. Without credit most of us would be able to afford very little including our homes, which are, after all, mortgaged. Usually.

In other words, if we could buy ONLY what we had salary or money to pay for, it would be a game changer. Most of us would be renting, and taking public transport. We would have to save for things we wanted to buy- and that would mean we could have homes _eventually_ or cars _eventually_, assuming we could save.

In no way was I implying that the worlds poorest are close to OUR situation or vice versa. Their plight is sadly true of LARGE populations of the entire world. It is on their backs that much of the worlds wealth is built. Its abjectly unfair, and cannot easily ever be fixed.

Im just saying: I dont kid myself into thinking I have alot more money than they do. I just have a lot more credit and options.
And Im no more deserving of it than any of them. [b][u]

We seem to live from one windfall to another. I wonder how long it will last.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I don't really agree with most of what you posted. Most of the people I know in this area who ended up in bad financial shape are people who just didn't want to see or know that the good times were going to end and instead lived in the moment.

And we are all praying that karma finds you sooner rather than later

Ironic that you would invoke karma to wish someone ill.

...DCUM once again proving that this group comprises the bitchiest people on the internet...