Looking out at the frozen Hell of the driveway, a solid lake of ice, inspired me to visit the MIT gym. I ran into a personal trainer who is also a professional jazz musician. He said that personal training was way down. How about the jazz? “One club in DC says that ticket sales are down 30-40 percent. They’re cutting ticket prices and guarantees to performers.”
How about folks who read this blog? Are folks cutting down on going out for dinner and entertainment?
I started group training at the gym and just signed up for guitar lessons. Am going for a social mixer tonight and tomorrow…
Yes. I’m a graphic designer making around $50K. I used to eat lunches out in restaurants daily, but I’ve been bringing a bag lunch since the start of the year. I’ve lost seven pounds and cut out a big chunk of my daily expenses. My wife and I go out to dinner about half as often as we used to, and we’re choosing less expensive (and healthier) Thai and Indian food restaurants. We’ve also been watching movies on hulu.com and DVDs instead of going out to theaters.
The funny thing is that our income hasn’t been impacted at all by the economy and isn’t likely to. There are lots of people losing their jobs and hurting financially, but I’ll bet there are lots more out there like us… slowing down our spending “just in case.”
Yes. We are cutting back on everything non-essential by 50 to 70 percent, although not eliminating those things entirely. The essentials are defined as shelter, groceries, and power.
The upside is we find we enjoy dinner and entertainment more now that we don’t take it for granted.
you betcha. i make $10k less this year than last (i’m a grad student).
free art exhibits and a $30 yearly museum membership keep me entertained,
but i mostly stopped going out to concerts, even the $15 ones.
i go out to dinner twice a week, spending $15, down from 5x last year.
tough times, but at least i’m not job-hunting!
and the economy means a lot of things are on sale when i can afford to splurge 🙂
I’m counter-cyclical: I buy when things are cheap (now) and spend more time working instead of consuming when things are expensive…
No slowdown, though I’m financially secure, and in Houston. Everyone I know is more immediately concerned with the price of oil than the US economy–expensive oil being better for the Houston-based oil services companies. But we’re also concerned about the economy in general, as we’re in a kind of “economic crisis multiball mode.”
Haven’t changed a thing–yet.
I spent 2004-2005 working full time without pay on a startup that went nowhere, so I have a pretty good idea just how much cutting I can and will do the moment my income changes. If the economy at large continues to tank, I’d put the odds of that happening at better than even during, say, the next six months.
Haven’t changed a thing. I have a modestly paid but tenured job, very limited exposure to the stock market, and have always lived within my means. I’ve missed all the booms (which is kind of a drag when you watch your IT and finance sector buddies raking in the dough), but have never had to make a downward adjustment in my consumption.
According to Mint.com, and looking back over my >1 year purchase history, I have cut back massively. Since September, the automatic budget it calculates has shrunk drastically. A lot of incidental monthly expenses like entertainment and restaurants have gone from $2,500 a month to under $500 – and now I’m just amazed that for so many years I was wasting away my hard earnings on the silly things in life.
Watching the movie Fight Club is a trip now – I did like my duvet covers and dining sets! I’m assigning a higher value to the experiences and goods/services that I am acquiring.
Great for people, turning a tide; awful for consumer-based business like so much of America.
Laid off computer guy: cutting back on just about everything, but considering blowing my severance on flying lessons. As for entertainment, I’m also hitting the gym a lot and trying to make my own fun. Netflix on demand, a tivo, and a playstation 3 pretty much remove the need to go outside.
I do hear reports from just about everyone still employed that their companies aren’t spending any money they can avoid spending; there are layoffs in companies not in any trouble.
One bright spot: no one seems to be hiring people doing J2EE web development, or anything else you’d expect in a big-from-the-ground-up development project. On the other hand, I am seeing a lot of interest in fixing up decrepit client/server software in things like delphi, powerbuilder, oracle forms, etc.; stuff people would have avoided like the plague three years ago.
I love live music and about 4 years ago I read some articles by this photo nerd named Philg then tested out my new dSLR on a regional band. I emailed them the pics and they said, wow we’ve paid people that don’t make us look that good- meet us back stage at summer fest (giant music festival). So one thing led to another and now I get paid a stipend to road trip around the midwest and occasionally some warmer places playing photog for a Chicago based band or two. On the mundane front, Hulu and an HDMI adapter replaced cable in my house, so I watch my weekly episode of House and that’s enough to make me happy.
I’m a volunteer fire fighter/EMT who keeps a distribution company glued together with Perl during the day. Programming is a fairly sedentary lifestyle, and fire fighter is well…not. So the gym is a must, and eating out frequently is a bit counter productive to that. I’d also rather use the cash spent eating out on “big stuff” like sailing lesson & boat rentals.
In the last three weeks several friends have been laid off- a lawyer about a year out of school, an interior designer of luxury condos, and a nurse at the same hospital for 22 years. My company says they are proud to have been around 100 years and never, ever had a single layoff…but I’m banking a big portion of my paycheck just in case. I figure if I get laid off its OK, and if not then maybe I can get my private airman cert in 2011.
Yes, but only because of a new baby, not the economy. I’m in health care, so it hasn’t affected me – which is why I went into health care in the first place.
Yes,cutting back. I’m in IT for the last bank standing, so far, in Charlotte and we are not expecting any bonuses. Not as big of a hit for me as it would be for a trader, but still a 7 to 8% cut to yearly income. All of us would be happy have our jobs this time next year. That’s not going to happen as off-shoring of IT support is still on-going.
If at all possible I am going to renew my Boston Symphony Orchestra subscription and donation. This is the finest orchestra in the world, playing in one of the three finest concert halls in the world. We must keep it in business.
I have definitely cut back but only starting this November. Now I buy lunch or pack lunch for work so I can afford to go out to lunch and dinner on the weekend. I always find a way to have fun on the weekend whether it’s movies, bowling, or music! I don’t go out to dinner during the weekend and every once in a while I will go out for lunch during the week seeing it’s much cheaper than dinner.