How has the recession affected your family?

[peaches312004]

What impact has this recession had on your family? On your or your dh's job, have you had to deal with layoffs, paycuts, and/or a reduction in benefits, thus causing you to have to cut back on things for your family? Has it caused you to rethink retirement? Or has your family been one of the lucky ones that hasn't had to deal with any hardships?

[finzel]

We've been VERY lucky, considering the layoffs that are happening around here. Both Rich and I can count our blessings that the hospital/college that we work for just is going through a hiring freeze, rather than laying off workers. It's more of a case where they were waiting for 260 people to retire, and then the hiring freeze would end...and it looks as though jobs are recently being listed again, so I guess we had 260 people retire!

I didn't have a raise this year. People in the college griped about that, but honestly, I'd rather have no raise if that means I'm going to keep my job.