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

Big law firms laid off lots of associates and/or quit hiring. Folks in retirement lost half their savings and I had several folks at my office come out of retirement. Others delayed retirement significantly until they could save more or the market recovered.

Folks in real estate and lending lost jobs. Mortgage lending industry went to hell. People lost their asses on housing. BTR housing market was good compared to many other places and even still if you bought a house in 2006-2008 you probably lost money in it. For example bought a house in ‘08 in BTR. By the next year it had depreciated by about 20%. Took until 2020 to get back up to the point where we sold it for what we paid. (Didn’t flood in ‘16).


Family member had to file bankruptcy to deal with the loss of value of his house in Vegas. $400k house became a $250k house almost overnight. Same thing happened in FL and other housing markets.

It wasn’t pretty for some.

Your parents were probably 45-55 at the time. Probably the best age to not be impacted by that crisis. In house long enough for significant equity. Lost much of 401k, but still plenty of time to ride the market out of the recession.

Took a real toll on those already in retirement and those just starting out buying first house.

Depended on the market. I live in a decent sized town in a rural area. Things basically rocked on like normal. Met a guy who bought a house with land in the Atlanta market before the crunch and relocated to my area for work during that time period. His world got absolutely turned upside down.

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People make fun of Dave Ramsey but being debt free, or so far ahead of the mortgage, and with money in the bank makes all these events a blip on the radar screen. Uncomfortable and a set back but not catastrophic. I feel sorry for people just starting out though.

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Dave Ramsey methods are great for people who have gotten in over their heads and don't have a clue how to use credit to their advantage.

The analogy I use is that Ramsey is to credit abusers what Alcoholics Anonymous is to problem drinkers.

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Pretty sure Louisiana was the least affected state statistically…..due to oil boom and because hardest hit industries were not located in the state

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If you don’t spend money like it doesn’t matter Louisiana is is fantastic place to live. You can almost determine how much tax you want to pay based up how much sales tax you are willing to pay.

Property tax is irrelevant and state tax low.

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Dave Ramsey methods are great for people who have gotten in over their heads and don't have a clue how to use credit to their advantage.

The analogy I use is that Ramsey is to credit abusers what Alcoholics Anonymous is to problem drinkers.

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Excellent post.

I was 45, owned my house and plugging money in my 401K. It wasn’t fun to review my retirement account but I didn’t really look at it much then. I was buying low which paid off eventually.

Me - no.

A good friend had his money invested in Lehman Brothers.

He lost EVERY dime and had to come out of retirement to go back to work (he was 79 at the time).

It was a total frick job.

He was able to retire again at 85, but only because he didn’t need as much money.

He is still kicking today in his upper 90’s.

I’m a carpenter and at the time was working for a prominent builder in Baldwin county that ALWAYS has work. If it weren’t for one big job that we started in 08 for a very wealthy person, we would have been up shits creek. Seems everything dried up for a year or 2 in that area except the super rich.

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It just didn't seem like that big of a deal to me at the time.

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You were in college when it happened? Did you stay in college or did you have job offers being thrown at you? Because I’m about that age, and me and just about everyone I know went to grad school. Wage growth crawled.

Lending was very locked up at the time. Just an environment of limited opportunities. And of course, stocks were way down, so mentally everyone took a huge hit to their wealth, so morale was low.

Not sure how you didn’t notice it tbh.

It didn't really affect me that much. In fact, in some ways, I benefitted. Yeah, my retirement portfolio took a big hit but I was 15+ years from retirement so it was just paper losses. But, during the period the market was tanked, I was buying in to my retirement at a much cheaper rate. Made all the losses up pretty shortly after that.