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I have new job - starting Monday.

 

Not much different to my last one, a large mining company, working in IT.

 

But with all the doom and gloom around the place I had a strange experience. I sent out my C.V to some specialist recruitment company's as I have done in the past many times. I had two interviews setup, was told I had done very well on both occasions, was in the top 3 and was being considered. Then... nothing. Silence. Awkward emails from the recruiters, 'Were not sure whats going on". Then after 2 weeks, both positions were 'withdrawn', no longer being filled and they would be in touch etc etc. Eeeeeeeep.

 

In the end I scored on my 3rd try, a very cool position in a large company owned by the Chinese Government. Great money, location, conditions the lot. I had a huge sigh of relief, I am shielded from all the problems for at least 12 months if I choose, but it does not look good even here where we are experiencing what they call a 'once in a life time boom'. The prospect of me not getting work, however brief made me miserable. So I really feel for others in places where economic conditions are far worse.

 

I have planned to go to London, Greece, Turkey and Israel in march next year. I am having a serious re-think. The AUD has dropped by a third in value, and I had planned to work in the E.U while there. Anyone else noticed much where they are?

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Man that sounds like a rough time Anestty. Glad to read you finally secured a spot. :)

 

There's only one experience I had with regards to the effects of Stock Market chaos and that was the sudden increase in the price of an ATI Saphire Radeon 4850 video card. I had bought mine shortly before the Stock Markets flew out of control which cost me $189+tax. About a week ago I was at the same store I had bought my 4850. I was just checking stuff out and overheard a conversation between a sales rep and a customer. The customer was asking for the price sheet of stock. Now the funny thing here is that Microbytes, a small-ish Montreal franchise, always has a large pile of price list sheets as you enter the store. The sales rep explained that the reason there are none is because the store is scrambling to reprice there inventory due to the crippled economy. When I got home I checked there website for the price of the 4850 I had bought and the price had gone up by $60. :)

 

I imagine other merchants have done similarly and I have a feeling Christmas will be quite expensive this year...

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not quite the same but last year this time we had a sizeable amount of equity in our house ( value of house above the remaining balance of the mortgage ) now we will be lucky to sell (if we were stupid enough to sell) to get enough to cover the mortgage and the realtor's fees.

 

and we've had the mortgage for almost 20 years now so you can imagine the hit the housing market is taking ...

 

looks like ill be in the cold and s#$% (the word is foul language around my house - but its used to name the white rain that falls) for a while longer :-(

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  • 2 weeks later...

Genenut, are interest-only mortgages common over in the US (they're very rare over here)? If you've got a "normal" (ie, one where you pay back the capital as well as the mortgage) mortgage & you've lost most of your equity, that would be a massive price decrease (25 years is the common term for a mortgage in the UK). If someone in the UK had said that, I would have expected their house price to have decreased by ~80-90% (since you would have mostly paid it off with only 5 years to go)...

 

Our house isn't doing too bad, I think we still have a reasonable amount of equity left, but no-one's really buying much at the moment, not helped by the mortgage lenders making it much harder to get loans, increasing the deposits required, etc...

 

If we could get a mortgage, now would be an excellent time to buy though (due to the lower prices, though I think a lot of people are assuming that it's a temporary blip & are holding out for things to get better again before selling).

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... looks like ill be in the cold and s#$% (the word is foul language around my house - but its used to name the white rain that falls) for a while longer

 

You could come down to Maryland and visit us for a few weeks. It's not the balmy south but it has to be warmer than where you are. We also have a house in northern Florida we are trying to sell ... interested? :P

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llama - we made the 1st time buyer mistake of buying when the market was at its peak almost 20 years ago. it then promptly crashed in 1991 leaving us with a mortgage bigger than its value. Things had finally recovered and we had equity over the value of the mortgage but then the bubble burst again last year and we almost have no equity above the amount of the mortgage...

 

Spock, we want southern to central FL , Polk county looks about our speed. Its nice and close to the 2 major va medical centers and close to relatives already down there. Otherwise I might have been interested ;-)

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