So after about 5 years of lean, I think it's time we gauged the economic impact on x404 once again.
Are you all rich, should saspro invite Ferrari to take out some advertising space?
Or is your situation so impecunious that we should petition Lidl to email us their tempting vouchers?

I noticed a long discussion about how to get your mitts on nearly stale bread for pennies recently, so that didn't bode well.

So, in the last 5 years …
I lost my job, lost my girl, my dog died, lost my house, got booted out of the house I moved in to, declared bankruptcy, got another job but only contract, moved to some place new and starting to pick up the pieces.

Also, I still eat pie.

Mark

All said and done, I'm probably on the same money I always was, but I'm still 'semi-loaded'... so I went for piss

The brief story of the last 4 years of my life:

2009: My life was a stagnant pond of wee, and my pay hadn't changed since c. 2000

2010: Lost job, found similar one, I dream of beating my old boss to death with my new one.

2011: My pay was way up and I regularly feasted on pie.

2012: Failing health means I now work part time, but I can still afford fresh cat food by economising on bread.

I'm thankful in no small part for this country's wonderful social welfare support. Without it, I would probably have starved or frozen on the streets when I left my first class state funded university education. Instead I had time to find a decent job and pay the country back. Then, in 2010 it supported me for the 3 months I was unemployed enabling me to find another job. Now I rely on our NHS to keep me alive with treatments I could not have otherwise afforded.

Not quite sure where to vote. I didn't lose my job, I got a pay rise, but only because I qualified for an addition to my job role, we moved to a bigger house nearly 2 years ago but still within our means but are still renting because we can't scrape a deposit together. We don't eat pie because my strict, life-changing diet (and until recently my gall-bladder pain) doesn't allow it, but we can afford to buy ready-grated cheese because we both hate grating cheese. We've made cuts in other areas (like going out, holidays etc) so we can have what we have, but we aren't in the well-off catagory, there will still be Xmas this year but we've cut right back on gifts.

I think the correct analogy would be coasting along on the surface of the water, not at risk of sinking, but also not high enough out of the water that we can afford to stop swimming.

I predict that this thread is going to be a happy thread.
</Sarcasm>

Mark

Roughly -
'04 to '05 - worked for an advertising production company, no contract, strictly freelance. Times were good. There was much pie. Although I only really ever saw the crumbs.
'05 to '06 - worked for a different advertising production company. This time, full time. Times were awful. Didn't get a single contract for the whole year to shoot an advert in the UK, but we did service the Dutch and US offices. The money was dreadful and I would often work a 60hr work to service those above me who were losing the plot.
Mental health declined, thought about suicide, but didn't.
Moved to the SW.
Couldn't do anything for a long old time
Became a volunteer with an environmental charity.
14 months ago, I beat over 60 applicants with MAs and first class degrees for my present job.
The money's more or less on a par with what I was making in '05, except everything costs more. I do get to have a social life of sorts these days though.

2007 got married moved sideways in the company I work for
2010 landlord failed to pay the mortgage and we got evicted
2011 escaped redundancy
Still rent, no kids and live a reasonable lifestyle.
pay wise its gone up by 25% since 2005 and I now get a bonus worth up to an extra 15%.

Brief synopsis:

University 2007-2010. Graduated just in time for the new government to announce "austerity" and see all the public sector jobs melt away.

Unemployed 2010-2011. Sank into my overdraft to pay rent & living costs etc. Managed to avoid bankruptcy and homelessness purely on the goodwill of my bank. The council made my life a living hell over trying to claim Council Tax benefit. It's an experience I never want to repeat and it almost broke me as a person.

Picked up a temporary part-time job in June 2011. Had my contract extended to March 2014 and given full-time hours, which keeps the wolves from the door for another year or so.

I haven't had a pay rise in that job, nor will I get one, courtesy of Mr Osborne. I applied for a permanent job on promotion in October, had the two assessments and the interview. I will get the result by Christmas. Depending on that result, I may be applying for more jobs in January with the hope of landing something permanent, but it's very lean out there.

Of course if I get the permanent job & promotion I will be both secure and better off, which will be a really nice feeling.

Five years ago was 2007 and that's when I graduated from uni. Each year of training, my role/job has increased along with an incremental payrise at each stage. I'm now earning more than I have ever earned but it's less than my peers (sacrificed pay for a place where I enjoy working and with people whom I enjoy working with) and definitely much less than it would have been prior to the recession.

The next five years is more worrying, with potential loss of job, or at least a pay cut back to my training days with an insurmountable increase in workload. Depends on whether the NHS gets dismantled and the Tories allow their private company friends to take over. Really hope that doesn't happen or it's bad news for everyone.

At this particular moment in time I'm enjoying my own vortex of despair. This may change one way or another on Monday when I find out whether I'm at risk of redundancy or not (2nd round this year, see also Tails of Fail).

While I do like some aspects of my job and the people I work with are pretty much all good other aspects bore me sideways and as a result I'm not really sure if I want to keep doing this.
There hasn't been a pay rise for the last 3 years and we also had a pay cut and lost our company pension contribution in an attempt to stave off redundancies 4 years ago. Got the pay back eventually but still no pension contribution.
Rent keeps going up (although not quite as fast as the landlord would apparently like) along with everything else so the effect of inflation is indeed very noticeable.
Social life hasn't been in the same league since my old housemate moved out and my other local friends live far enough away to make going to the pub a bit of a chore as someone would need to drive or pay for a taxi.

Bah! That's what I say. I'm off to look into the vortex - sometimes the swirling pattern can be quite pretty.

My pay is way up and I regularly feast on pie

2007 - Get job at conference centre on Exmoor. Job is great, pay is crap. Meet lovely german girl
2009 - Lose job at conference centre. Have to move back to Lancashire and spend 3 months apart from fiancee. Can't find work
2010 - Get married and finally have sex at the age of 29 years and 11 months. Move to Northampton to find work.
2011 - Get (very) part-time job cleaning - wage is about £30 p/w. This is deducted from my job-seekers allowance.
2012 - Get job at software company. Get promoted within 3 months. Pay is now more than 3 times what it was in 2007.

I spent eleven months on half pay in 2009, followed by six months unemployment, before getting the same job at at different company (for about £3k a year less) in May 2010.
Things are back to normal now though. The pay has gone up the last two years, so things are looking okay.

I left school in 1976. There were no jobs and money was tight. In 1989 there was a crash in the property market and there were no jobs and money was tight. My friends who had mortgages complained of something called negative equity for the next ten years. In 2008 Alistair Darling let it slip that there may be trouble ahead.
By this time I had worked my way into a 3 bed semi, girlfriend with 2 kids (not mine), my own limited company, 3 employees and a dog. Thats all gone now.

It has been a tough 4 years, but I have been lower and I have a lot to be grateful for. I am beginning to experience a bit of ageism, but most of my client base appreciate my skills and the thanks I get go a long way.

I had good regular work at a job I was good at, but I was getting fed up with dealing with the rubbish stuff clients sent us. I thought I could do better. In 2001 I set up as a self-employed graphic designer.

Being utterly useless at advertising myself, in 2003 I had to find a proper job again. I did quite well, but the company was liquidated, reborn in a new guise, and I was made redundant in 2005.

For a couple of years I freelanced for a software company, working on their documentation and testing procedures, and producing the user guide. They kept piling on pressure, and I was close to snapping at one point. Eventually I managed to get away and have time for myself again.

In 2007 I was offered a freelance post in a small company in south London. It was going to be part-time, became pretty much full-time, and for a time the money rolled in and I was happy with my lot. Then things started to unravel. We tried to start a UK-themed photo stock library, but were let down badly by the web site developer. I ended up being owed a fair chunk of money, which I'll never see.

Since then, I've had short-term freelance contracts, been struggling to find new clients, failing to find new work, and applying (and failing to get) "proper" work.

Best Beloved is retired with a fair pension, though he has health issues so I have become a part-time carer for him, we don't have a mortgage, and we get by. We pay the bills, or rather BB pays the bills. I keep trying to get in a position where I can guarantee some kind of income and start to pay my share again, but it looks like I'm going to throw in the towel and sign on in the new year. The last time I signed on was in 1981, for about a month. It feels like giving in, if you see what I mean.

We don't want for much, but it would be nicer to have a bit more disposable income to spend on nice things like a newer car, finishing the decorating, sorting out the house in general, and for the nicer things in life. Then again, there are plenty out there far worse off that we are.

Onwards and sideways.