are you feeling the pinch

[philip van praag]

as we are in the uk and have this year seen the econermy start to slow property etc.
i was wondering as we have a global membership, how are things in your home land. is your income afected by the slow down, are investments making less .
are you finding it harder to get work to replenish the kitty, are places you wanted to go out of reach because your currancy has taken a dive.
most of us have made our money and set our dreems over the last 10 years, were there has been a good global econermy. the last uk down turn took 5 years to hit the bottom and 10 to get to the top were we are now and seem about to go over.
on the flip side we are considering heading to the us to take advantage of the week $. do others travel to take advantage of excange rates.
what are your thoughts.

[cnj]

Here in the North East of the US it hasn't been good at all. My investments lost $2,000 in the first 17 days of this year. To leave for our trip, the only thing we have to do is sell our house but with the subprime lending fiasco and all that goes with it, our house is now worth $40,000 less than if we had tried to sell it a year ago. Luckily we don't owe much on our house and can still get what we need as far as money for our trip. My husbands job was 45 hrs per week, is now down to 32 (if he's lucky) but the worst part is that everything has gone up because of oil prices. Our money doens't buy what it used to.

As far as comming here from somewhere else, because of the exchange rate might be worth it, but with unemployment at 5%, getting a job here might be tough.

[Islandmike]

I am in the North East as well, CT, and as cnj states it is not good. If you have to drive anything more than 10 miles to work you go broke just buying fuel for you car. Home heating oil is up, although we keep our house at 60 degrees it still is a huge increase over past years. We are getting ready to put our house on the market, and again just as cnj states, the market has fallen, we will lose at least $35K when we sell. However, with that said, we are moveing forward with our plans. We hope to move on board this summer and leave in the fall. The one bad/good thing is my job. I run a large food distrubution warehouse, business is through the roof. In my facility we ship over 1 million cases per week. The bad thing...I am salaried and as a cost cutting measure, instead of bringing in more help, sups, mgrs etc, I have been forced to work even more hours including at least on weekend day. I am now approaching 75-80 hrs per week, I only need to hang on until May or maybe June?

Unless you have a skill that is in high demand, stay away from New England. There are opportunities in Atlanta, Dallas, and places in the midwest, but that is so far from the ocean...

Good Luck with what ever you do.

[philip van praag]

our petrol is now over £4 $8us per gallon
and a pint of beer is over £2.5 $5us taking into account the current exchange rate.
the avrage house price is just under £198.000 $400,000
and my morings for 37ft cat at 1.5 is £4800 $9600us per year
one night on a visitors moring for us is £30-40 $60-80
but my wife works on the marina as a cheff for £6 per hour and i can get work in the marine or building trade at £20-25 per hour
as we dont need to travel to work its not to bad.
we sold our house at near top of market 2 years ago and now are trying to build a crussing kity but we can still aford to cruse local waters for three months per year and still save for long tern crusing.

[never monday]

yep, I'm in full survival mode until spring. My phone hasn't rung with new work since November.

[David_Old_Jersey]

Not sure if I count as being in the UK........but economy down here still doing more than ok - but we seem to exist in our own bubble ...... as I am effectively self-employed a down turn would not be great for me - may even have to go get a real job

[ssullivan]

I've whined on here about housing creating "unfair" weath because I was too young to catch the bubble.

Right about now... I'm pretty glad I never did catch that bubble (although I did benefit from the old tech bubble).

I'm in the North East and can safely say the economy hasn't affected me in the least, except for 2 things:

1) I can't find a good place to invest to get any kind of return (so I'm buying a boat instead!)

2) Fuel is costing more than I would like.

BUT... I am not affected because this is how I set my life up... to be free from the "red side" of the balance sheet.

[psteele235]

I sympathise with you guys in CT talking about the recent drop in your house prices - but when you weigh that against how much they have gone up over the past 10 years or more I would guess you are still doing OK?

The problem will be how long it takes to sell and get the cash, and then deciding what to do with the net (after Uncle Sam and the lawyers take their cut) to give you worry free income and capital preservation while you are at sea.

[ssullivan]

Originally Posted by psteele235

deciding what to do with the net (after Uncle Sam and the lawyers take their cut) to give you worry free income and capital preservation while you are at sea.

This is the part I'm struggling with. Nothing is giving a decent rate of return. Could always buy that new CitiGroup convertible issue... 7% yield. But still... it's hard to generate any income, while preserving capital and beating inflation right now.

[philip van praag]

i am intrested in how it has changed your plans.
1:are you leaving later
2:have you changed your investment
3:are you now planing to work
4:are you considering a difrent crusing ground
5:will you rent your house insted of sell
6:will you only cruse part time now.
7:have you put back your retirement
8:are you buying a cheeper boat.

[Jackstee]

Know what you mean.
I work abroad, in Hotels and most of us are paid in Us $ or a local currency linked to it. Ive lost $14000 in the last two years with the fall/devaluation. They are not increasing the salaries.
Our house in UK is rented out but we have decided to sell before we have to invest heavily on repairs.
We will be using one of those companies that buy's below the actual valuation , but pays cash and I don't pay any fees at all.

The cash we earn on the difference in value between when we bought it will be used to buy a small two bed villa in Turkey. (10 mins from the sea) About 5 grand goes into the boat and a few more into savings.

This way we own our property outright, have the boat close to the house and get a small refit and live in a country we luv. (Only for holidays for the next 5 - 10 years)

It's the way out we have decided with the fall of the salary value, start of a drop in the housing value and a way to get an emergency crash pad, and very good holidays.

Steve

[Joli]

The problem seems to be we are in a cycle of deflation for real estate but everything else is increasing in price. It makes sense that real estate is correcting itself considering the price of some property. Who knows where the bottom is.

We are not changing our plans, the boat is about paid for and the kids will be out of school in 5 years so we'll go. We'll still be young so plan on working 1~2 months per year at a nuke plant during outages. We can leave the boat at a yard and have work completed and rebuild the cruising kitty without touching retirement.

I think our kids will grow up in a much different world then we did but we also grew up in a much different world then our folks did.

As a famous General said "If you don't like change you'll like irrelevancy even less."

[cnj]

From phillip van praag.
i am intrested in how it has changed your plans.
1:are you leaving later
2:have you changed your investment
3:are you now planing to work
4:are you considering a difrent crusing ground
5:will you rent your house insted of sell
6:will you only cruse part time now.
7:have you put back your retirement
8:are you buying a cheeper boat.

1. We're still hoping to leave this fall.
2. I've changed investment strategies to weather the downturn (hopefully)
3. We may decide we need to work but that decision will come later
4, 5 & 6 are no
7. Retrement is still on target
8. Luckily, we bought the boat last year so that's one less worry, but it's more expensive to keep then the little weekender we had before.

Hopefully we'll get the house sold and be on our way! I'll worry about the rest of it then.

[S/V Elusive]

Sean - You are now looking to buy a boat ...again? What about your land yacht? If you are buying a boat, what will you consider differently than when you bought your last one? And, since I don't wish to hijack this thread, Sean, can you start a new thread to answer?

[Therapy]

Feeling it?
Yep.
12.8% less pay per case 06 to 07.
Higher costs for everything.
Every time I reach a point in my life looking at what I want in a boat it seems it is just a little out of reach........