re: How many of y'all were personally affected by the 2007-08 financial crisis?

I was just graduating. Was lucky to find a job after a few months. The job I did find was not paying well but I stayed there for fear of being out of work.

My parts had the house paid off by then but the house lost about half of it's value so they were kind of stuck.

Took about a decade to recover.

My dad lost his job at Motorola and I started college in 2008, so my priority became attending somewhere I could get a full scholarship and that’s how I ended up at LSU.

Early on it created a huge amount of work for me. I was working on an acquisition, had it almost closed we were going to use our own cash on hand ($52mm deal) but still had to run it by our lending syndicate to maintain covenants.

The syndicate, smelling money, asked for a $11mm “fee” for allowing the transaction. Our CFO told them to get bent and told me if I wanted to deal to get done I needed to put together another syndicate not using any of the current banks.

We had about $350mm on a term loan and another $275mm or so available on a revolver.

So off I went, putting together an almost $750mm syndicate in the midst of the meltdown. I got it done, but damn was it a challenge. I was also reviewing an S-1 during that period as we went public July 2007.


Good times.

I was affected. The pay cuts I was forced to take made me take a job near Philly because it was offering double the salary plus per diem, a truck allowance and gas card. I tried for years to move back, instead went to Chicago, Long Island and back to Philly

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white collar professional services job, and the crisis was used as a justification to delay my promotion. I learned in hindsight the crisis excuse was just a lie, used as convenient reason to delay my progress so those above me could enjoy more money and more power for a little while longer.

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This was the case in law firms as well following the crises where partnership tracks were extended and non -equity partnerships became more common.

I had multiple friends from law school who didn't get a real job until 3+ years later. We graduated in summer 2008.

I took a low-paying, no benefit job back home because I couldn't afford to bum it and, thanks to this board, I knew what was coming. My BR friends were flabergasted why I'd go backwards, but they also did not accept what was coming down the pipe

I lost tons of clients, initially. they had trouble keeping the lights on and toilet paper in the bathroom, so anything that was not absolutely necessary was cancelled. They all came back but it slowed the economy for a bit.

Watched my 401k lose half its value, panicked, and put what was left into a money market. Missed the ride back up before moving it back into stocks a few years later. That dumb decision easily cost me a million in retirement accounts. Fortunately, I learned from it and invested heavily into stocks after the covid crash but it didn't come close to making up what I lost in 2008.

Bought a house in 08, paid 4000 to sell it in 2011 for a move