Any Change Of Plans?


Well, I agree that things don't seem to be as intense as what I heard about the depression, but my fear comes from the fact that that only a small percentage actually care. So a depression doesn't seem too unlikely. In my local area unemployment is in the two digits, it took me five months to find a job, and two months after that to where the job became livable (I almost became homeless in that process..) I'm doing ok now, and by next summer my Girlfriend and I are hoping to have enough money saved up to move away from here.

Personally, I don't see any problem with using a credit card as long as you're responsible with it. In fact, it seems as if there are more laws governing credit cards than debit cards, so using a credit card like a debit card could be safer (wouldn't really know though, I only have a debit card). But I guess my main point is that credit cards aren't really the problem, they just provide a service, the problem comes from people (lots of people) not realizing that they should have to be able to afford something before buying it.

My brother can be an example of one of the problems where as soon as he moved out he was expecting to be able to afford the exact same lifestyle as my parents, not realizing that they worked at least thirty years before being able to be secure with what they had. So he really ended up falling flat on his face finance wise with a bunch of luxuries he couldn't afford. (and kind of an interesting bit I just remembered, My whole family (six people total) were without a house during our first summer here before we got a trailer set up and livable, I was just under 2 at the time so don't really remember any of it though).

During my five month bit of unemployment I noticed loads of “help wanted” signs, but never got hired at any of them, and there was even this one place where the second time I went to apply I heard the secretary talking to someone about how she didn't know why they had the sign since they were getting loads of applicants but never called for interviews. My only theory was that the management was pulling a “Wal-Mart” and saying something like “It's ok lowly employees, work a little harder, we're looking for people to help you, see the sign, honestly, we can't find any help yet, but it'll come soon” or whatever other B.S. line management tends to feed it's people when it's trying to save money.

In fact in the job I have now our group gets told how many hours we “need” to work on something, and the big boss can get a bonus for how many hours he can cut away from that figure. So basically, he gets paid to leave us short handed (which means we can't finish everything), and effectively boost the unemployment rate. This also sucks money out of the town and places it in the areas where the higher ups live, causing our community to become poorer and poorer (and once again, the biggest problem here is that few people actually care).

And while the gas prices did seem to drop, I just assumed this was just a tactic used to keep voters from pushing for a candidate advocating a change in the current transportation system (didn't this happen last election too?).. But the cost of actual utilities in my area has actually rose 20% (fortunately now that the winter's coming I can basically turn off my fridge and save even more ;) ).

As far as what all this has to do with me getting a Pandora, well, I knew I couldn't get one in the first batch, but I'm looking for a second job to be able to get some extra cash by the time the second pre orders come around. I'm hoping I can use it for all the low power tasks my computer currently gets used for, saving me extra money on utilities. So really, the economic issues haven't made me want to pass the Pandora up.
 
More than anything you have to live within your means. I work part time during the school year and make about $600 dollars a month. With rent, food, and utilities I usually spend about $500 (I do live in a smallish college town, so cheap rent). I save some and spend the rest. A budget is good. That's how I can purchase the Pandora. I had enough money in my "frivolous spending" supply left over from working full time this summer to buy it.
I also just took some of the stuff I had lying around and managed to get 320 dollars back from selling it on ebay, which makes me feel a bit like I hadn't actually bought the Pandora, simply traded in some things I wasn't using for it.
The funny feeling is thinking about once I get a full time job. I don't have kids or a mortgage, but jeez $3,000 dollars a month seems like the life of luxury, and I could easily make a lot more after a few years.
Maybe I can afford to eat something besides ramen and frozen pizza. Luckily I can heat the room with all the excess heat of all my computers and server.
 
thre's no prob in Russia.. I don't mind other countries.

Well... I'm thinking about the Wiz now,
even reading some docs, shuffling my unfinished projects and stuff.

In other words, I haven't changed the plans.

Someone, spare me some time 8)
 
I'm still getting my pandora, I also just bought a 4870 and a new Motherboard

I bought the card and motherboard my self, but I'm l lucky Santa is coming for me this year..

I think my family is quite lucky, we had a bit of money in the bank.

My dad is self employed and if no one has money, we are out of luck :unsure:
 
DawnOfTheRent said:
Well, I agree that things don't seem to be as intense as what I heard about the depression, but my fear comes from the fact that that only a small percentage actually care. So a depression doesn't seem too unlikely. In my local area unemployment is in the two digits, it took me five months to find a job, and two months after that to where the job became livable (I almost became homeless in that process..) I'm doing ok now, and by next summer my Girlfriend and I are hoping to have enough money saved up to move away from here.


There seems to be this sigh of relief that we didn't go into a depression. I am not saying we are going to, but people seem to think that the stock market crash happened in October and there were soup lines in November. It took a good while for things to get really bad, I think a little over a year. There was even a partial recovery in the market after the crash. We have a few things going for us that we didn't have going for us then, but we have one MAJOR thing going against us now that we didn't have going against us then: Sound money. Our dollar today is worth about $.03 when compared to that era. I think it would have been really nice to have the democrats take over the White house and the Republicans take over the congress. Congress could use a little gridlock right now. No new laws, unless they are repealing old ones. Start with the PATRIOT act then move on to ending the federal reserve system. Take the 900 billion dollars that Americans pay in income taxes and give it back to them, or take it and pay down the debt with it. Because right now, it goes to interest. Not one dollar of your taxes goes to anything but collecting the tax and paying interest to the federal reserve system. One of the biggest rights of a government is the ability to print money and regulate the moneys' value. THe US congress needs to take back that right from the PRIVATELY owned Federal Reserve Bank and make it a function of the government again.
 
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