Are you worried by the recession? How do you plan to make money?

I am not yet working and I am so glad that my family can still holding up in this crisis. I am so glad that my parents can still make some living for us but I also worried about the situation. I am making some money from the internet but of course it is not enough for me to get a living with that. So far I am making money by posting and do anything I could in the internet. Of course I am trying to think about making some more, because I have to earn my own money from now, for I have to reconsider about my parents' financial situation. It is so hard for now... really hard.

My fiance and I are currently unemployed so everything we get from here just is saved. We are lucky enough to live with his parents, but I feel so bad as sometimes his mom get so frustrated with us not doing anything. I want to, but then again I'm afraid to ask her what I could do to help, she's always seemed as if she's got it all down and that she doesn't want any help with chores and such around the house. I know that I do try to help in little ways like turning lights off behind me and such, when I don't I feel so bad that I hadn't. I want to discuss a few frugal ways with her, but I also know that I am a bit frightened or would feel awkward with doing that as well. We live in the country so I am sure we could save money by buying farmed grown vegetables and milk, there's a few places around here that offers it... Right now, we're just saving, but I do wonder what the prices will be like once we get back into the working world.

I'd been searching for an answer to that question before this got into full swing, so I'm fortunate that I'd begun my plan before this started. Mind you, I'm still a kid -- I'm a teenager, and won't officially be an adult til after 2009...so this all was brought into scope by me attempting to plan for my future admidst this uncertainty for the whole nation. =) We traded our old burnt out property (several acres) for this property out in the country (just a little more than an acre) so that we could stop renting and digging a hole under ourselves. This may seem uneven, but the old property was burnt out and we don't have the money to build anew (especially under the rent we were) so...to trade, no money involved, for a house in the country with a decent scrap of land is the best luck we could ask for. Anyway, we just did this recently. Moved in just this past October. As we were moving, I initiated the beginnings of my plan. I began buying seeds. Yeah, that's my plan. To grow food to sell. My family's farming folk, so we've got the knowledge and the skills, and it seemed pretty economical because nearly all the seeds I bought were for a dollar which means I can sell just a tiny bit, make my money back and everything after that will be a profit (which, should the plants flourish...will be a decent chunk). Selling, for example, six big fat tomatos for a buck...that beats pretty much all the stores around here -- can easily compete in the farmer's markets. Food is a recession AND a depression proof job. Some people will, doubtlessly, consider me quite mad considering I've only a little over an acre to work with. But since organic is cheaper for me to maintain, and it'll mostly just be me and my Mom (I've enlisted her help, lol) working this space...it's probably the smartest idea I've ever had in my whole life. The key, in my mind, to a successful business is that once you achieve the ability to compete with others in a horrible economy, by having something people need and can actually afford: is to have a variety. I have tomatos, eggplants, collards, soy beans, corn, green beans, onions, pumpkins, squash, watermelons, lettuce, cucumbers, peppers, blackberries, wolfberries, strawberries, dwarf cavendesh bananas, dandelions, roses, hyssop, lemongrass, catnip, mint...and probably a few other things I've forgotten. Some of these things, as you can imagine, are being grown or started indoors. Quite a few of these, I have more than one kind of. And finally, a couple of these things may take a few years to produce fruit. I'm hoping to get just a couple other things, but I figure this should ensur a pretty decent start. When we were in the city, we already a few of these things and grew the city as well. I'm hoping to be able to sell preserves, pies, flour, candied flowers, soy sauce, etc. In addition to that, I'm also playing with the idea of making things with my hands to sell. Like weaving purses, rugs, pet leashes, etc out of plarn (this depends on whether or not I can purchase some crochet hooks). Maybe making gazebo poles, and musical instruments if I get my hands on some giant reed and can figure out how to grow it without it spreading everywhere. We've offsetted things by selling just regular stuff at flea markets, and turning in cans and scrap at recycling, so I figure we'll just continue to do that, as well. Even though this is considered "thinking small" -- especially in my state where big agriculture's a big thing (no pun intended)...I'm dreaming big. Wish me luck, huh? Strangely, my only worries are about possible setbacks. Not so much about failure, but setbacks. I'm more hopeful, actually, than I have been in a long time because of this idea of mine.

I am going to be selling some of my sewing, (cloth diapers mostly) and I have been getting ready for the last year and have started a blog http://preparedforsurvival.blogspot.com where I am sharing some of the ways that I have been getting ready for bad times.

with the way things are going and how we now have less then ever before things will get worse. as prices go up more and moer and the pay does not increase more and more will do what ever it takes to stay alive. this in nature is a primitive thing to do what it takes to survive, but it does not have to be that way. if more people would live by the words of the great good book, then things would not be as they are now.

that's one of the reasons i'm looking for make some money online. Sell's les needed items? a good idea, but why not on ebay insead of the garage? And anyway, sometimes is good if we can better understand how much money we waste, or wasted, in unneeded items, and how much we can save if we try to remodel our lifestyle into something more easy. If we learn that we can use a cycle to go near, instead of use the car, we will save money, and save also some pollution. Is just we need to get some new good habbit and, i'm sure, our life will be better. And you will see, when higer priced stores will not sell anymore their goods, their prices will go down.

We had already made a lot of changes at the beginning of this year before all this started because we wanted to save up for things so when things went bad we were pretty much in a good position. My hubbys place of work is suffering really badly and there have already been two rounds of redundancies made with more to come so my hubby is going to take a course for another job, he has already been offered a job when he passes the course so that is one good thing. I have made lots of cuts and have cleared all the debt that I can do with money that I had saved so our outgoings are as minimal as they can be.

we have been struggling financially for a long time already so i know all the things to do to cut back and where to shop and on and on but it is getting worse and worse for us so just holding onto our home is getting to be very stressful. right now i pay the mortgage and taxes first and everything else has to come after that. it is very stressful to live this way but we are doing the very best we can and raising a son so we get up each day and do all we can to make things better for him. i know one thing, we cannot give up or give in.

yes ,i feel almost each person worry about the recession ,i am a collage student now and i will leave my collage at once to find a job ,but i am a chinese and you may know that there a lots of people in our country ,so it is difficult for me to find a proper job even in usual time ,let alone in the recession .now i feel unhappy facing the bad condition .

Yes, times are hard at the moment and I am trying to save money big time. I am running around turning the lights out behind my kids and making them more aware of how much things cost. I have been buying a lot of non-brand foods also. Some of these are really good and I will be buying them forever. I have not been buying clothes or sweets or candy either, I actually put some cookies 'I lifted' back on the shelf as I said to myself "we do not need these". We had two cars on the road, and I just sold one last week to try and cut down on the running costs, as petrol, tax, etc is just beyond it, 'way to expensive here in the UK'. We have managed well so far with one car, and I am not ever having two cars again, unless I win the lottery. I think I have actually been doing quite well stretching my money (or trying too). I have learnt alot too as I was buying things before I did not really need. I hope we all get through this hard time and come out of it ok. I think it has made us all realise that we spend money on a lot of unessesary things.