They say this recession (depression in my opinion) is going to be this generations depression. People will start learning how to save and actually downsize. The saving rate is actually up quite a bit in the last 2 years and credit card spending is at an all time low. In my job I run in to a lot of people that live in million dollar or more houses and drive 100k cars. Most of them have jobs that pay them 20k or so per month and they are just scraping by to pay their mortgage and their car payments. Naturally they don't want to destroy their credit rating and they are at least 300k upside down on their house. So they have to stay where they are.
I bet that in the future people like that will buy a little lower and save a little more, just in case. I bet Dave Ramsey is doing pretty well right now. If I could downsize I sure would. The only significant thing we could do is sell our house. Of course we're upside down so it's not a real option. I would only do it if we were going to do a BK. Credit cards are torn up but the bills keep coming in. Tried to sell the kids and nobody would buy them. Suburban is paid for. Only people that will buy the horses like to eat horse meat. We will be having a garage sale in the spring though. Maybe I can sell the kids then.
