I wasnt aware that a recession happened in 2008 until recently. Do you remember it and if so how did it affect you?

40 comments

1. I made A LOT of money in the recession. It opened up a lot of opportunity for me.

2. 😂 we need to hear why you didn’t notice that the whole economy was imploding around you!

   I graduated college in 2008. Worked in a retail manager job for a bit but got pissed off at how “chicken little” they were being because of their perception of the economy and left in early 2009. Moved across the country, got a good government job, and used the housing price collapse to buy a place in 2010 (people in their 20s used to be able to do that). Rest has been history.

3. 2008 – 2009 was a struggle for me. but starting in 2010 things REALLY picked up. But it was scary times in late 2008 when the housing bubble burst. When that happened and home values dropped, we owed more on our house than what it was appraised for. Obviously this reversed within a couple of years and we ended up selling it in 2018 for double what we paid for it. What I remember most about 2009, the roads were never so free of traffic. There was so much unemployment, people weren’t out commuting.

4. Lost my first proper job in the 08 crash. It was a mad time for me. Most of the lads I went to school with worked in construction and a good lot of them joined the forces and more went to Aus to work on those gap year visas you can get. It was like the whole town left.

5. Lost my job, couldn’t find a new one. So I just started partying harder more often. Not a good combo. Eventually figured shit out and went back to school and got a couple of degrees, only to loose my job when the pandemic hit.

6. How old were you in 2008?

   Any adult at that time couldn’t possibly have missed the fact a recession happened. It was the biggest economic event in decades.

7. I invested a lot of money, but barely broke even because one of my big stakes was in BP … you know… the oil company that crashed a tanker in the Gulf Coast and was on the news for weeks with live coverage of their product destroying a massive ecosystem? Yeah, those guys. My other top pick was an Australian internet company that skyrocketed, so it’s not all bad. All in all I still say investment is the right call.

8. OH YA. We were this close to another Great Depression.

   Company I was at wacked from 60,000 to 20,000 and eventually down to 200 before I quit ~10 years ago.

   We really haven’t had a recession since then (2008 – 2010) – COVID 2020-2021 was different – and people are NOT**NOTNOT** prepared for it.

9. I bought a house dirt cheap in that recession. Thankfully my job was steady though didn’t get any merit increases.

10. Worked my ass off and made it through fine, just for the divorce to bankrupt my ass.

11. Well I was ending middle school and I remember the teacher saying “ah I really hope when it comes to you kids to start working the situation will be better”

    I’m Italian, we haven’t had stable growth ever since, and had the peak of the crisis in 2011

12. Remember it vividly.

    I was lucky enough to be in a job that wasn’t affected (worked for an outsourcing company) but not so lucky that I was in a position to take advantage and buy a foreclosed house like my older sister did.

13. I was 16 so still a teenager. But I lived next to a neighborhood that had just been built with a bunch of fancy new houses that sold out as soon as they were built. The recession hit and BAM everyone started losing their homes. I remember the “foreclosed” signs were everywhere.

14. I had to listen to a lot of commercials that went: “we know you’re struggling with the recession, but here’s why you should buy our product”

15. Bad times, man. Bad times. Fuck American banks and triple fuck George W. Bush.

16. I had a house I was renting out. The tenants destroyed it and I had to lose it or rehab it. I put the work in, maxed out my debt, sold it 4 yrs ago and walked away with profit.
    I will never rent a house again. It’s great income when you have good tenants. When you don’t, it costs you money.

17. I was 14 so I was aware of it but I didn’t care because I was 14.

18. When it started I was fine. Just a year after uni, was working as a TA in a local school

    2010 and 2011 was hard though. Dropped out of doing my PGCE in may 2010 and got a job the following September as a TA in local school where I now lived. Lost that in 2011 due to budget cuts and was unemployed for 2 years trying to find work, this was with a son born in mid 2010 as well, and my fiancée lost her job in 2011 as well.

    Worked some agency TA work during 2012 but wasn’t massively stable.

    Finally got a temp job in 2013 for Christmas and still there, now as general manager, over 9 years later

19. Was young, no field trips after it.

20. I was 13 at the time so I didn’t pay much attention and I’m from the UK

21. All I remember was my dad couldn’t find work and we had to give up cable and other luxuries. So it wasn’t too bad

22. Back then I really wanted to join the military. I tried every single branch. But all turned me away due to budget cuts.

23. My mother pickup a second job as a waitress at a local bar. I was about 11 at that time. She was a real estate agent for a small company at the time. She now has her own firm.

24. I was 16. Fortunately didn’t affect me directly but a good friend’s dad got laid off and I remember them being really worried about losing their house and everything.

25. It was a big fucking deal. Whole banks and big Wall Street firms went tits up. People lost their life savings on bad real-estate deals or on investments based on those deals. President Obama, who had just been elected and was enjoying a never-to-be-repeated period of broad support, was seen as saving the economy through bold action.

    I personally held some General Motors debt and the government bailout was the only thing that stopped me from losing my whole investment.

26. Didn’t affect me or my family but my region is a major auto industry hub and when Chrysler went bankrupt it destroyed the whole city’s economy.

27. I graduated high school in 2008.

    I remember the principal saying in his speech that we were graduating in a tough time and to be mindful of it.

    My parents were actually doing fine, my dad was a higher up in a securities firm as a CPA and my mom worked with the county so they were fine. Actually better than fine, during the recession the owner of the house my parents rented panic sold the house to my parents for $550K, and now it’s worth around $1M due to California being stupid expensive.

    It did change my own life choices though. I went to college with the initial idea to get into writing. Eventually move to LA and try to strike it out in Hollywood.

    But with the recession I saw how many people were going broke and suffering. I realized that at the time I’d probably be unable to find jobs.

    So I pivoted 2 years into college and went into accounting too.

    Fast forward to now. I work in finance for a biotech startup making a comfortable 6-figure salary with a house in California which by itself is already considered impressive (even more impressive is my wife lost her job last September and we are still doing fine with one income lost).

    But I still wake up everyday wondering what if there wasn’t the recession and I did follow my dreams instead of waking up everyday dreading to go to work.

    But I guess it may just be a case of the grass being greener.

28. I was lucky to finish college and start my career in 2008 just before it really got bad. I had to relocate towards the end of that year to keep from getting laid off but ended up making fantastic money through the whole thing. The industry I was in never really slowed down too much. Then I bought a house at rock bottom prices a couple years later, which I still live in today. So for me it all worked out really well.

    But I knew a ton of people who spent a long time unemployed or got out of college and couldn’t find a job. My dad was unemployed for about 8 months at one point during all of it.

29. I remember it. I was 35 years old at the time. A lot of people where I work were laid off and I was only working four day work weeks for months. Pretty scary stuff. Glad when it was over.

30. It did not affect me at all. My country wasn’t impacted. I learned about it from the news.

31. I was 16 and 2008 was my first impression of the economy.

    I remember never being able to find a first job and it basically turned me into a socialist forever after.

    Never get too comfortable with what you have, nothing is guaranteed. So safety nets exist for a very important reason.

32. I remember 2008 but it started in late 2007 really. I was about to become 9 years old and it was the first time that I became “financially aware”, triggered by the fear that my dad could loose his job, he was in a managing position at a bank at this time. The amount of fear and worries I had about grown up stuff funneled into a depression I got treated for just a few years later.

    I now know better, the bank’s gonna get “rescued” by tax money before my dad gets laid off, lol.

33. I bought an apartment a year and a half earlier and suddenly the value of my property was less than my mortgage so that wasn’t much fun. I also noticed at the company that there was less work than a year earlier. All in all I wasn’t too affected because I still had a job and I could pay my mortgage and eventually the economy recovered

34. Wow….. I’m so fucking old….holy shit.

35. I’d encourage you to watch The Big Short (on Netflix last I checked).

    That covers the housing crisis that basically precipitated the recession. That shit that the banks did and got away with then was one of the biggest scams ever pulled on the American people.

    It undoubtedly led to many more deaths than 9/11 did.

36. I was young, but we lost our house. It was my first huge heartbreak in my life. It hurt so fucking much. I remember sneaking out to get some water a few days before we were going to start packing and my mom was outside smoking and bawling her eyes out talking to my father. My father took that very hard and a few years later, he died from cancer. I really do think that the stress of losing the home caused him to get cancer. I mean it probably didn’t but it definitely didn’t help. But even when my father died, my mom kept herself super composed and I never saw her she’d more than a few tears. But losing the house, man that was hard.

    2008-2012 was not a good time for me. I don’t have fond memories of my teenaged years.

37. I remember it but it didn’t affect me. I was in my early 20s and wasn’t all that independent yet. I was working at a subpar job that surprisingly wasn’t affected at all by the financial crisis either. I actually thought I was going to lose my job at the time.

38. You must be really rich

39. I learned about it a few years after it happened. But it had zero effect on me over all.

40. I was a kid at the time.

    I remember a lot of arguments and fights between my parents. All money was spent on bills and supporting my older brother in University so I basically disappeared in 2008.

    Just trudged along and dealt with it.