DawnOfTheRent
Still Fresh
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.
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.
