Daily Spends – A Diary of Spending Habits

I’m no expert on newspaper niches (besides the obvious like The Sun) but I guess when The Independent starts writing articles for their readers about coping with personal debt it’s a sure sign that even the more professional & well healed amongst us are struggling at the hands of the credit crunch. Get a load of this:

http://www.independent.co.uk/money/invest-save/are-you-drowning-in-debt-dont-despair-972695.html

I suppose the story starts about here (where the media started to sew the seeds of consumer spending doubt) and ends about here (where middle England gets hit by the credit crunch). Somewhere in between, unprecedented financial conditions have made a previously unthinkable impact on UK consumers.

I can’t get away from news relating to the gloomy economic outlook. Everywhere I turn I see doom and gloom, economic warnings, detailed scenarios of house price disasters! This article from the Times being a perfect example – Credit Crisis:  Experts assess how bad it is

The interesting thing about all this doom and gloom though is how us ‘everyday consumers’ are coping and whether any of the ‘city’ stuff will mean we take a hit in our pockets.

For me . . . it’s certainly lead to a bit more frugality and asking questions of my overall financial position. What happens if I’m made redundant? What happens if house prices do crash? Is it likely that I’d be pushed into negative equity? Could my family remain stable under any further financial pressures?

It’s time like these when I’d assume we’d rely on the likes of the FSA, OFT & MPC to help bring the city & consumer’s worries under control.

Will you be making any changes to your daily spending habits? If so, what will they be? Many of us are already watching our spending to keep us from going to the wall . . . can we cut our budgets any further? Are you considering taking advice on your debts and other financial issues . . . or have you got them all under control?