Recession woes

[Trout]

Ah, Ush, that's crap. I'd endorse the getting-the-hell-out-of-Britain option. I've had lots of family members do it, and it can pay dividends to take your skills to a place with a high standard, but low cost, of living (Canada).

- Trout

[House of Usher]

Ah, Ush, that's crap. I'd endorse the getting-the-hell-out-of-Britain option. I've had lots of family members do it, and it can pay dividends to take your skills to a place with a high standard, but low cost, of living (Canada).

- Trout

Abroad sounds more atractive to me than ever before, but I still cling to wishing things were better and more equitable here. Canada would be nice. I could manage there as a researcher, but I'm not confident of being able to teach anything worth a damn over there because apart from research methods and social theory, all the sociology I know has a specifically British context. I could teach anthropology I suppose, but they've got better anthropologists than me in Canada already!
 

[hag]

This is why I stare at people blankly when they tell me to / ask me why I don't do a PhD.

[IAMTHESYSTEM]

I think it can take up to three years to emigrate depending on your skills but I bet Canada or Australia would be happy to take you. Some websites claim to have 'free' emigration assesements though I suspect you might have to pay a fee somewhere along the line. Any way just a thought.

[Matt Timson]

At the risk of getting the same kind of slating the last time I dared suggest it- leaving the country makes more and more sense to me.  

Feeling your pain, Dave.  I've never particularly worried about money- and that's not because I've got the stuff falling out of my ears or anything- but rather because I'm of the opinion that things always work themselves out in the end.  You get by- even if you're skint, even if you're in debt- you find a way to make it work.  Right now, I'm looking at my debts, looking at the economy, looking at the possibility of a complete financial meltdown and, for the first time ever, I'm actually worried.

I hope you can work something out.

[House of Usher]

An update on my situation...

Good news, actually. One of my courses hit the magic number of enrolments to avoid cancellation, and the others have been allowed to go ahead because the bosses were persuaded of the benefits of keeping all the courses going, their contribution to the core curriculum, and their value to the students in terms of learning opportunities and qualifications. But I can't help feeling it was a very close run thing.

SO I'm pleased to say I'm gainfully employed teaching more hours a week than is good for me for rarther less than I'm worth and about half what I'd be getting if I were on a salary doing exactly the same as I'm doing now... but at least it pays my mortgage! And I have a job interview next week for something far more prestigious and lucrative, but I'm not counting my chickens before they're hatched.

Commiserations to anyone who's out of work because of the fallout from the banking and stock market crisis. I saw the headlines today, and it made me glad that at least until next June I'm relatively insulated from financial disaster.

[jakeblues69]

I don't know if this will help anyone, but I'm going to post it anyway. The company I work for, here in the US, runs lotteries all over the world. Here's a link to the jobs search page for our UK subsidiary: //http://www.camelotgroupcareers.co.uk/


I started out servicing slot machines ( did that for 3 yrs ) and have been in field service ( servicing lotto machines & scratch off machines ) for the last 5 years. It wasn't the job I dreamed of doing, but it's turned out to be pretty good. One thing for sure, it's pretty recession proof and I see myself staying with the company for another 20 years hopefully. Anyhow, I hope this will help someone out. Oh, when I went into this, I had zero background in computers/electronics, unless you count hooking up my new computer out of the box and installing a car stereo once, so if you can follow written instructions and have some degree of troubleshooting ability, in my opinion, you're qualified to apply. Good luck!

[Bad Andy]

On a similar tangent, if you're numerate then betting shops are always looking for staff, especially as they are all open until 9.30pm/10pm. It could be quite easy to get a few evening shifts as a relief cashier. Most places have automated till systems which means you need to know bugger all about horses/football.

Is there any scope for private tuition for your subjects? Parents are always keen to get extra help on maths/English if their kids are struggling.
You could always re-invent yourself as an education consultant with a bit of rejigging of the old CV and charges schools, colleges, university, local authorities, government lots of money by stating the obvious.

Send submissions into a few DCSF public consultations as a 'consultant' and that could give you some legitimacy. Crazy I know.
http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/consultations/

[TheEdge]

i'm up the last few months what with the 10p tax cut money filtering through.

[Banners]

Slightly unrelated - but as a tax-payer who is now subsidising all these failing banks in the so-called "credit crunch", I'm somewhat aghast that the Halifax has, without me asking, prepared a £6.5k personal loan for me, which they have kindly just let me know is ready and waiting, merely pending my approval (which they won't get). This, despite my Halifax credit card being far from paid off.  Grrr...

M@

[Matt Timson]

Unfortunately, the world economy depends on debt to keep rolling.  Take the loan and help prevent the entire collapse of our monetary system.
 

[TordelBack]

I'm as functionally innumerate an economoron as the next man, but when the missus and I (then a pair of star-crossed DINKYs) went looking for a mortgage in Boom Town 5 years back, I couldn't believe the attitude of 4 out of the 5 lenders we went to.  It was literally "how much money do you want?".  Not "what could you afford to pay back if one of you was out of the workforce or (heaven forbid) paying for childcare?", "what type of property are you trying to buy?", not even "well, what can you afford to pay back now?".  When a figure was mentioned one lender, then our own bank in fact, actually said: "oh you could get much more than that".  More than one ostensibly sensible type whose advice I asked said:  "you should buy the most expensive house they'll let you have - you'll only regret it later otherwise".  

Happily we ignored everyone, looked at our income, imagined what we could pay if one of us stopped working, and went with the bank that asked us to produce wage slips and statements going back 5 years, and a budget plan, and bought a terraced box in a housing estate on the edge of Knackeragua.  And while both of us still work, we're now paying a fortune in childcare, and we're both earning considerably less than we were then, I'm skirting bankruptcy on a weekly basis, and we're just about keeping up.  I can't imagine where I'd be now if i'd taken the €500K I was offered, but I equally can't imagine why anyone thought it was a good plan to work this madness on a global scale.

[hag]

On a rather smaller scale I'm an unemployed recent graduate with a 2k overdraft ( not to mention student loan ) and the bank keep offering to extend my overdraft on my other account. I know a few hundred quid is small potatoes, and it's rather useful while I fail to live off jobseekers, but can't make that much sense.

[Banners]

Take the loan and help prevent the entire collapse of our monetary system.

I'm going to sell the loan to some yankee hick trailer trash - or is this how the whole problem started in the first place?

M@

[House of Usher]

Is there any scope for private tuition for your subjects? Parents are always keen to get extra help on maths/English if their kids are struggling.

Yes, actually. My partner is a personal tutor for her main occupation. She doesn't teach English, although she could do so quite easily, and she passes her English tutoring enquiries on to me. I'm currently dealing with 2 students a week on her behalf.

I've also thought about the potential in going into business for myself. Potentially lucrative, but at the moment I am too wary of taking on that level of risk.

Re: reckless lending - I was offered £148,000 but I settled for £135,000 because the repayments were more manageable and I figured I'd do most of the renovations out of my earnings. Thus it took forever to do the house up!

Magpie, it makes sense for you to take advantage of any cheap lending you can get from your bank (but not necessarily loans!). After my first degree my bank was very stingey by today's standards and would only lend me £450 at a time, grudgingly, and would demand it paid back in full every new term until I graduated, whereupon they insisted I pay it back at the rate of £10 a month. Seems a bit silly now. After the Tory idea of student loans became normalized (by a Labour government, if you please!), the same bank that had been desperate to claw back its £450 has since extended to me a £2,000 overdraft, free for a year or two after graduation, and still quite useful between paydays once I had to start paying interest on it.

Out of the blue my bank recently offered me a loan of about £17,000. I turned it down, seeing as I'm not greatly in need of any additional debt at the moment. I'll stick to the overdraft for the time being, thank you very much.