- My son was still at home during the recession in 2008.
- Despite being frugal to begin with, we had to cut our spending.
- We included our son in money discussions, and he started working to help pay the bills.
I’ve lived through a few recessions, but only one during which I had a child living at home: the Great Recession of 2007 to 2009. It was the deepest and longest recession since the Great Depression, and it hit me hard.
At the time, I owned a hobby shop in California, which relied on people having extra money. When the economy started to pull back, we were hit. We’d already seen a decline in the preceding years; the recession was the last nail in the coffin.
As the recession dragged on, I tried looking for work, but with unemployment at 7.2%, there were not many opportunities out there. We were in danger of losing the house, and tough decisions needed to be made. So we made them as a family.
My wife and I included our son in the financial conversations we had
From the very beginning, we taught our son about money. At a young age, we gave him an allowance. It was his to spend any way he chose. When he wanted something like a video game, he needed to spend his money. If we went somewhere special like Legoland, we would offer to get him something up to $20, but anything else came from his money.
So when we fell on hard financial times we included our son in the discussion. It affected all of us. We would talk about money and what we had to spend each week.
We had always been somewhat frugal with money. Still, we did all the normal cost cutting. Vacation travel was out. We cut our premium cable channels, and stopped eating out as much. Instead of a big trip, we took our little camping trailer on local trips. Hiking and museums replaced amusement parks and movie theaters. Date night was dinner at home, followed by a rented video.
I started selling collectibles on eBay
We began getting the house ready to sell. We knew it’d be better to sell it if we could rather than have the bank take it, but the house was not in any condition to put on the market. We started with a general purge of old furniture, clothes, toys, and household stuff. Anything that didn’t have garage sale value went to Goodwill.
I had lots of antiques and collectibles. Some I inherited from my mom, but we also had souvenirs from our trips to Disney and NASA collectibles. I hated to part with them, but they were just things, and we needed the money. So, they had to go.
I had a small studio on the dining room table for listing our hobby items online, and we set up an eBay store. We got dozens of boxes from the attic and sorted them. We set up tables in the living room.
Everything was photographed, priced, and listed. We packed items up when things sold and made daily trips to the post office and UPS store. My son even helped with the packing and shipping. The money kept us going.
My son got a job to help us pay bills
My son, just 14, got a summer job at the Boy Scout camp in San Diego. He’d wanted to do it but had previously been too young. My wife spent that summer alone managing our business.
Later in his life, my son confided in me that he worked at the scout camp all those summers to bring in some money and help us save by not having to feed him during those months. Though we were never at a point where we couldn’t put food on the table, it was difficult to hear as a parent. But in a way it filled me with pride at the man we had raised.
Those were difficult times, but I believe our shared hardship brought our family closer together. In 2009, we closed our retail store and just kept the online sales. In 2010, I returned to the corporate workforce. Today, we are financially secure. I was able to retire early. My son is now married, a father himself, and has bought his first house.
However, it did completely change our view on money. We are now super-savers. If we have to spend money, we look to Goodwill or Facebook Marketplace before we go to a regular store. And when we don’t need something anymore, we sell or donate it. We feel almost uneasy when we have to spend money.
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