You can’t go anywhere lately without anyone mentioning the Credit Crunch, it’s got to a point now where it’s being blamed for everything and I think it’s nothing more than just a convenient excuse.
Have you been affected by the credit crunch? I haven’t, yet. My place of employment still managed to get the same number of bookings for our courses as last year and with that it wasn’t the hardest we had ever worked. My company deals in the professional training arena and what would you expect the first thing HR departments would cut back on in a credit crunch?………training their staff.
On a personal level, I am still able to move my small-ish sized credit card debt between various 0% interest offers, my bank overdraft hasn’t been touched and I found out the other day I am eligible for sizeable loans (then again who isn’t?). Readers may cry “What about mortgages?!”, at the end of the day, when you borrow and there is a crisis with your bank, there is nothing you can do, it’s the same as a pension, you’re taking a massive gamble. People who borrowed efficiently and kept within their means aren’t really worried about the credit crunch, from the outcries I have witnessed it was the people who borrowed above their means and bought houses that stretched their budgets to above a tangible limit, so as soon as the interest rates on their repayments rose, they couldn’t afford the repayments on their house (look at America’s Sub-Prime mortgage crisis, it’s the same here).
I have noticed changes but these changes I don’t think are dependant on the Credit Crunch. The price of oil was sky-rocketing way before the US collapse and with agriculture being hit hard, the food bills have steadily increased. I have been lucky in the respect that I can now walk to work and don’t have to fuel a vehicle nearly as much.
What grinds my gears is the way the media report this “crisis”. Every single morning, headlines are dominated by our economy and rightly so. But what we don’t need are the Fiona Phillips of this world patronising me with how I am going to live when fuel bills rise again and the food bills mean I live on cat food. She earns £500,000+ a year and I really don’t need her fake sincerity.
Life is good and I will continue to ignore this pap they are propogating, I am starting new businesses and buying more than ever before, why should I be worried about some Icelandic bank being bought out by it’s government? The reason is I bank with companies who can afford to buy their smaller counterparts so I will never have to worry.
Bankers, the lot of them.