How is the economy affecting you?

Hi Simplyme31, Join the club!! I am in the same boat:-( But when I have to make a decision between food and bills...guess what? I choose food, it's just that simple... Maybe my stategie can help you...I wrote 3 letters to creditors requesting deferrment of payments for 2 months...so far Honda accepted so my car payment is not due till end of October, I didn't have to pay August or September...waiting for a response from others :-( (of course these missed payments will be added to my debt) I'm in this mess because of high oil prices, I was paying $240.00 monthly for budget billing (that's for two homes) and that went up to $600.00! I simply wrote them and flat out told them there is no way I can afford a payment like this so I'm off the budget billing with a promise to start repaying my debt in mid September...looks like that's not going to happen either :-( Listen, no one can get Blood out of a Stone and that is that...thank God people cannot get locked up for debts...can you imagine...we think the jails are full now, it would be a catastrophy if we, debtors, were locked up!! I have also faxed my Home loan bank explaining my situation and requesting to refinance or a modification of my loan, hopefully they'll get back to me. Remember that a lot of people are having financial problems nowadays so you and I are not the exception or the majority...we are all in the same boat...just try to make the best of it and don't stress too much...in the end we only have but one life to live. Take care of your family and I sincerely hope you find some relief :-) ~Stay cool, stay well and never, never stress~ ~G~

It's terrible. I've never felt so poor in my life. We are still able to make our house payments, but I'm afraid in a couple months we may not. It's a very scary thought. We're trying our hardest to avoid missing any payments, but it's difficult.

Luckily I don't buy the food in the house so that doesn't affect me but gas prices do. I put $30 in every week and that's supposed to last me the whole week but it never does. I drive a lot back and forth between two suburb cities so that takes up alot of my gas. Other than that I am not really feeling the effects.

It is making it harder to find a job for sure. I am working part-time at a restaurant right now, but I am looking for full-time work. The economy here in Pensacola has sucked for as long as I have lived here. This has got to be one of the worst economic areas in the country under normal circumstances. Add the $4 per gallon gas and the deteriorating state of the U.S. economy as a whole to the picture, and the outlook is grim. I am beginning to wonder if we should have waited to buy a house. I bought this place about two years ago, and things were good, but now I have a mortgage to worry about. Had I known this, I don't think I would have bought when I did. The place we were living in, though really run down, was almost paid for. We only owed $2,000 on it. We really needed a bigger place that wasn't in such bad shape, but I am beginning to wonder now if I made the right choice to buy when we did...If I don't find a job in the next few weeks, I may not be able to make my mortgage payment. I am looking for work every day, but with gas so expensive, I can not afford to drive all over town. I am running short on cash already, so I have to be selective about where I drive. If things don't get better soon, I don't know what we are going to do... I hope the government realizes what the cost of gas is doing to people. I know that isn't the only factor, but high gas prices lead to the cost of everything else going up. Higher gas prices make it more expensive for companies to do business, so they pass that cost on to us as consumers in order to make a profit. The higher gas prices go, the more expensive everything else is going to get. The cost of living is on the rise at a rapid rate, but the wages aren't increasing to compensate for it. I am the last person to say that we need to raise minimum wage, because raising the minimum wage is going to have the same effect on companies that the higher gas prices is having. Higher payroll cost increases the cost of doing business, so the companies raise prices to compensate. I saw this first hand a few years back when voters here in Florida elected to increase the minimum wage amount. Within weeks, the price of everything went up... Just lowering the price of gas itself is not going to solve the problem. Fuel prices are a main contributing factor in the state of the economy right now, but it is only one problem. If the price of fuel comes down, the cost of business will decrease slightly. How will the business owners handle the decrease when that happens? Will they lower their prices a little to ease the burden on consumers, or will they continue to charge the same price and add the extra money from the lower operating expense to their profit? I think we all know the answer to that one. It is going to take a collective effort to fix this problem. People will spend more if they have more to spend. If wages stayed the same and prices were reduced a little, people would have more money to spend, and they would spend it in the businesses. Most people aren't very good at saving money. They may save a percentage, but people generally spend most of what they have left after paying the bills. Some people spend BEFORE paying bills, but that is a topic for another discussion. I don't feel that lowering prices a little would hurt the economy, because people would spend most of the extra money somewhere... We need elected officials who are skilled in accounting and business operations. We need politicians who are, to borrow a term Robert Kiyosaki uses in RICH DAD POOR DAD, "financially literate." Unfortunately, we don't have any candidates in the upcoming elections who fit this profile.