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General Discussion => Welcome and General Discussion => Topic started by: HPstache on June 23, 2017, 08:50:37 AM

Title: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: HPstache on June 23, 2017, 08:50:37 AM
PLEASE READ:  You must choose 3 options, one from each sub-question for this poll to work well!  Input your CURRENT age.

I wanted to create a poll as a spin-off of the most recent MMM blog regarding the coming of the next recession.  I am curious to know how many of us really experienced the great recession in 2008 from a financial perspective.  So to help determine this, I would like to know:

1.  How old are you now?
2.  How much did you have invested in the stock market in 2007 (obviously, this will be approximate for most of us, so take your best guess)
3.  Did you own a home in  2007?

What do you think it took for someone to really "experience" the great recession?  I personally think it's only for people over about 35 with over $100K invested, or $50K invested and a newly purchased home.

Do you think you financially experienced the great recession?  Me personally, I am 32, started working right in 2007.  I had maaaaybe $10K invested at the time.  I did buy a rental duplex in 2007 to live & rent and it lost some value over the next years.  But all-in-all I did not experience the great recession financially.

Because this poll doesn't tabulate well, I will update the percentages for each sub-question periodically:

18U: 1.5%
19-25: 8%
26-32: 28%
33-39: 29%
40-49: 22%
50-59: 10%
60+: 1.5%

Less than 50K invested: 63%
50K-100K invested: 9%
$100K+ invested: 27%

Owned home: 45%
Did not own home: 55%

Title: Re: POLL: What is your Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: RWD on June 23, 2017, 08:57:09 AM
I am 32 now. I started working and contributing to a 401k in 2008 so almost nothing to lose in the stock market. Though I did invest about $7k in Prosper peer-to-peer loans in 2007 that lost about $2k due to defaults (likely influenced by the recession). We bought a house in 2008. Not quite at the peak, but it still halved in value over the next 2-3 years.
Title: Re: POLL: What is your Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: Spork on June 23, 2017, 08:58:55 AM
While I selected "owned my own home" ... that's not entirely true.  It's just the truest answer I could pick.  We had land.  The land had a tiny metal building on it.  We lived in it.  I would not call that a traditional "home".
Title: Re: POLL: What is your Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: LovesToTravel on June 23, 2017, 09:01:04 AM
I'm 32 now, started my first job in early 2007, so I had virtually nothing invested.  Bought a house in 2010.
Title: Re: POLL: What is your Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: Caoineag on June 23, 2017, 09:20:34 AM
...
What do you think it took for someone to really "experience" the great recession?  I personally think it's only for people over about 35 with over $100K invested, or $50K invested and a newly purchased home.

Do you think you financially experienced the great recession?  Me personally, I am 32, started working right in 2007.  I had maaaaybe $10K invested at the time.  I did buy a rental duplex in 2007 to live & rent and it lost some value over the next years.  But all-in-all I did not experience the great recession financially.

I am almost 36, had only a little money saved and didn't buy a home until 2008.

That depends on your definition of experienced it. I experienced a year of contributing to the stock market and watching each contribution immediately lose money. At one point my account was worth half what I contributed. While I didn't have a ton of money in 2007, I kept contributing throughout and even contributed more in 2008. I bought my house in late 2008, it was a short sale. I was laid off both in 2008 and 2009 and my husband experienced a layoff as well. 2007 is when 0% interest rates on credit cards dried up and I was trying to get those paid off since up till that point I didn't pay interest on credit card debt. We went from ~80k income in 2008 to ~60k income in 2009, it wasn't until 2012 that our income hit 2008 numbers again. I think your definition is a little too focused. If the question is, did I experience the recession financially? The answer is an unqualified yes. I felt it in my investments, my income and my ability to stay employed. I also got to experience it in non-financial ways but that is not what you asked about so I haven't listed those impacts.

I would say that people with debt and people with jobs also got to "experience" the recession. But the financial effects were definitely not limited to 2007...
Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: FireHiker on June 23, 2017, 09:30:27 AM
I am 38 now, so I was 28 in 2007. I barely had anything invested; I had a 401K through work and was contributing to get the company match, and had been there since 2003. Vanguard tells me I had 31k in 2007. I did own my own home, but I had re-financed it in 2006 to buy out my XH, intending to stabilize life with my young son and then sell in a year or two. Unfortunately, the market crashed so badly that I ultimately had to short-sell. It sucked, and I will never allow myself to be in that kind of a position again. I was making decent money, but was not very financially aware and was totally blindsided. If I hadn't been so financially illiterate and had seen the signs that I THINK I would recognize now, I would have sold in the divorce, split the proceeds, and rented. Hindsight, right?

I have since re-married, we've moved twice (bought and sold, moving up), and had two more children. We have about $539k of home equity currently (home is "worth" $1.1M) and have non-home equity net worth of 716k. I would say that I definitely "experienced" the great recession. It was not a good experience, but I sure did learn from it and have since made much better decisions.
Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: HPstache on June 23, 2017, 09:36:07 AM
I think in retrospect, to better capture the housing market side of the poll I should have had an option that said "I bought a home between 2006 & 2008".  Those people were often really affected.
Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: aceyou on June 23, 2017, 09:44:41 AM
I bought a 100k house in 2006 as a 24 year old out of college. Only list a hit in it because lower priced houses held value better.  I sold it in 2011 at the very bottom at a 5k loss, but bought​ a house for 225 that was going for 250 before the recession.  It's appraching 300k now. The recession likely helped me in retrospect.
Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: Prairie Stash on June 23, 2017, 10:00:19 AM
I had a better experience than most. In 2008 I was in the early stages of investing, the hard part was all the doom/gloom stories saying to hoard cash. I brazenly invested in a blue chip stock about $6k, a very large amount back then. Watching it climb in 2008 and onward reinforced buy/hold to such a degree that I can handle the next recession better.

With all the tales of woe, people sometimes forget there were winners in 2008.
Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: MasterStache on June 23, 2017, 10:01:49 AM
I graduated college in 2007. I knew a recession was happening but didn't have trouble finding a job. I started investing at that time but didn't much care about the value. I lost a few thousand the first couple years, but my mindset at the time was not early retirement or stashing huge sums of money. I just generally didn't care much. In hindsight not caring about the value was good, but spending most of what I made was bad.

We bought a house in 2009. Oddly enough the house we sold (was my wife's home when I first met her) netted us a tiny profit when everyone including myself thought it would lose money. I saw it was for sale again recently for less money. We got lucky.   
Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: MVal on June 23, 2017, 10:06:33 AM
I was just out of college in 2007 and just got my first full time job, which didn't pay much, but was ok. I had no investments but a few thousand dollars from scholarship leftovers and about $17K in student debt.

Today I'm about two months from 35 and just crossed six figures in NW, with about 85% of that invested.
Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: StarBright on June 23, 2017, 10:16:39 AM
I'm 36 and had about 20k invested at the time and was one year into my first "real" job.

The recession helped me. I was throwing extra money into my 401k with every paycheck, buying financial and auto stocks, and we bought our first house at the beginning of 2009 at a great price and got the gov. incentive check that came along with it.

I'm sure I'll stay the course in the next recession (because I am committed to doing so) but I have real money in the market now so I'm not sure how it will affect me emotionally.
Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: Tyson on June 23, 2017, 10:19:00 AM
I'm 45, I didn't have a lot invested in 2008, but I did have a condo I bought in 2006.  Which dropped in value significantly during the recession.  I just had to wait a few years till it recovered, sold it for a profit and moved to a small home.  I see index funds the same way - if it drops, just wait.  They will recover.
Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: mm1970 on June 23, 2017, 10:31:43 AM
I'm in my mid 40s.  We owned our home (well, part of it), and watched its value drop by $300,000 during the recession.  Our NW dropped a bunch too.  Ouch.

But we both kept our jobs and could still pay the mortgage, so...
Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: nouveauRiche on June 23, 2017, 10:41:33 AM
Mid/late 40s. 

Had about $289,000 in 2007.  Dropped to about $204,000 at the lowest.  Virtually all of that money was in retirement savings, though.  So I basically ignored it, stopped checking Vanguard, kept contributing. 

ETA:  House value dropped a ton in 2008, too.  Don't remember specifics.  But we didn't much care since we could still afford the mortgage & we weren't interested in selling.  Now its value is ridiculously high and, while that's kinda fun to look at, we still don't much care (for the same reasons).
Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: Samsam on June 23, 2017, 10:47:09 AM
can this poll be edited, I totally messed up my answer...checked the wrong age. You can change that 18 to a 26-32
Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: letired on June 23, 2017, 10:47:16 AM
I'm under 35, had just barely broken 100k in a mutual fund in early 2008 (and had a 401k and IRA that didn't amount to much), no property, and had just started grad school. My experience was watching that mutual fund value drop like a rock (over 50% decrease, the 401k and IRA were less dramatic) and watch the university start scrambling for money to fund grad students.  Teaching loads increased quite a bit and time limits started getting enforced more strongly and no one who was finishing was having an easy time finding their postdoc. On the upside, I was able to scrape together some money from my stipend and invested a bit in individual stocks, which worked out pretty well.
Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: ketchup on June 23, 2017, 10:51:59 AM
I was a senior in high school when it all came crashing down (2008).  I had $0 invested, and no more than a few grand in the bank at the time.  I know my parents' investments took a nosedive.  My dad seemed to have faith in the market recovering, and wanted to double-down on investments.  My mom couldn't always sleep at night, and didn't want to contribute anything until the market recovered (out of fear, not logic of any kind).  They owned a house (bought in 2000) but had paid it off by then; I assume its value also rollercoastered.  They didn't do anything stupid though, so it all bounced back.  Their only actual struggles were on the employment side of things (marginally harder to find work, but not nearly as much as it was for some).
Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: Milizard on June 23, 2017, 11:02:25 AM
Bought my first home in 2007--an unfortunate mistake.  Got a great deal, but missed out on waaay greater deals.  Just under $100k in the 401k before it crashed.  It recovered, NBD.
Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: wenchsenior on June 23, 2017, 11:24:30 AM
Current age: 40-49/50-59
Over $100k invested in 2007 (~150)
Owned house in 2007

We experienced it...having started our adult investment lives during the early 2000s recession, we had just finally gotten our cash assets up in the 150K range when it all fell down summer/fall of 08.  We owned our own (modest) home, and had paid off about half the mortgage.

Ironically, 2008 was the very year that we had started pulling back on investing because of very costly family issues that came up. So at the same time our portfolio tanked by a third, we were reducing our investing AND we pulled 20K of equity out of our house and took on a second mortgage because we needed to purchase a second house (for a parent) AND we had to take on a new car loan because we needed to give our car to said parent.

During the initial plunge and extreme panic (fall 2008), we were fortunately at a field site in the British Virgin Islands with little internet and no television.  We'd parse the bits of apocalyptic news that dribbled in from the outside world, drink our rum and look at the sunset each evening, and note that we might be destitute by the time our field stint was over. 

But seriously, although it was a bit scary, the predominant emotion that I felt that fall and the following 2 years was absolute rage that so much of our cash was tied up in debt repayment on a car and a second home and a home equity loan.  I knew we were missing out on the fire sale of a lifetime (and in all truthfulness, had our parental 'issue' not struck during that particular time frame, we would easily be 2 years closer to FI than we currently are).  I wanted to pour money into the stock market like a drunken sailor throwing gold doubloons at whores.  I WAS SO FRUSTRATED, IT PISSES ME OFF TO EVEN REMEMBER.

On the upside, I was so desperate to buy stocks cheap, that we paid off our car, home equity loan, and massively ramped up our savings rate in about 2.5 years.  So the missed opportunity really motivated us.
Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: honeybbq on June 23, 2017, 11:26:54 AM
I was 30, owned a home, and had over 100k invested in 2007.

The losses were quite shocking. It took quite awhile to recover mentally and monetarily. I still buy and hold, but man, I give the skunk eye to 2007.



edit: crap, I also screwed up the age poll. I answered the age I was in 2007. Whoops!
Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: DTaggart on June 23, 2017, 11:37:00 AM
I'm 40 now
Had over 100k invested in 2007
Owned our house (bought in 2003)

When the SHTF, I remember thinking and saying to my husband how glad I was that we were in the habit of living below our means and we weren't one of these people who were one paycheck away from losing everything. It solidified my commitment to this kind of lifestyle. My only regret is that I didn't find a way to free up more cash for investing at the time.
Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: NoraLenderbee on June 23, 2017, 11:39:19 AM
I'm 54 now. We had around 750K when the crash came, and had bought a house in 2004. Our net worth went down, of course, and our house value dropped a lot. However, my financial life was not affected, except emotionally. I was fortunate enough to keep my job. We did not depend on income beyond my salary, so we could ride out the recession.

I knew a lot of young people with minimal assets who were severely affected in that they could not find jobs, or could only get part-time or temp McJobs. Some lost a lot of crucial years of salaries.

One of my neighbors was remodeling their house. They had just added a second story and were depending on refinancing to pull out more cash to pay for the rest. They ended up with a completely unfinished upstairs--just framing and outer walls--for over a year. They had a block "party" to get help to put in the windows.

I knew several people who had retired or semi-retired before the crash and had to go back to work. That would have absolutely sucked.
Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: Bracken_Joy on June 23, 2017, 11:39:50 AM
Argh. I missed clicking the home one, and this isn't one I can remove my answer and re-vote. Can you update the poll for dummies like me that missed a check box?

FWIW,
28 now
Less the $50k invested in 2007
Did not own a home

I took a personal finance class the year in college, and I remember sitting and watching the S&P up on a screen taking a nose dive as my prof explained subprime mortgages. Talk about a lesson that sticks.
Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: Jessamine on June 23, 2017, 11:50:25 AM
30 now, and was still in college in 2007.  Dummy me didn't start investing in a 401k until 2011 (several years in the working world at that point) and didn't start understanding the finer points of investing until quite a few years after that when I started maxing contributions and adding to a taxable account.  I did buy a condo in 2010 at the low end of the market, though.  Still kicking myself for missing that run up in the markets from 2009. *sobs*
Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: pachnik on June 23, 2017, 11:56:26 AM
I had about $100,000.00 or a bit more invested in 2007.   

I remember sitting at work and talking about the drop in stocks with a co-worker.  Then of course there was news about it all over the media.  What I think saved my bacon was that i was receiving paper statements on a quarterly basis and by the time my statement arrived with the huge loss showing, I was kind of used to it.  So i didn't over-react i.e. freak out and sell.  IIRC Iceland lost a third of its value on paper at the time.  Really scary stuff. 

I also owned my own condo then but I am in Canada so at that time anyway we didn't have any fallout with subprime mortgages.  IIRC my real estate value was pretty stable. 
Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: teen persuasion on June 23, 2017, 11:59:13 AM
We'd bought our house in 1995, and our area experienced no boom, no bust, so that part was a non-event for us.  We been paying the mortgage down aggressively (ugly 9.75% rate), so we were nearly done at that point. 

DH had a 401k at a former employer, all invested in retirement date funds, which we watched tank.  Just left them alone and waited for them to recover.  His 401k at his then current employer was switching investment options, and somehow my choice was misinterpreted - instead of changing his new contributions to a bond fund, they moved all his funds to that fund.  At first I was livid, and was set to move things myself, but the timing was providential - his balance only took a little hit, mostly the unintended move to bonds preserved his total.  Watching things continue to drop, I opted to leave the big chunk in bonds and put all new contributions in an S & P 500 index.  It was an experiment.  The bonds essentially stayed at $24k, while the new contributions climbed with time.  Before this, I didn't really know about indexing, I was frustrated trying to pick funds by looking at past returns.  I knew it didn't make sense, but I didn't have a better plan until I learned about indexing. 

DH's employer cut the matching, and DH wanted to quit contributing.  I wanted to increase his contributions from the minimal 5% to get the match, to double it to replace the match.  I tweaked his withholdings to keep the take home roughly the same.  After that, I realized the extra tax benefits - EITC and state EITC matching, and started a plan to keep doubling his contributions when expenses dropped or income increased.  So 5% to 10% to 20% to 40%.  Oldest was starting college, and reduced AGI was a bonus on the FAFSA.

After the old 401k recovered, and I was convinced about indexing, we rolled that 401k to Vanguard into VTSAX.  A couple years later when the mortgage was gone, I pushed the 401k contributions to 55% to max it, and I opened Roth IRAs for both of us for the first time, and agreed that DH cut back and stop teaching summer school.

So in many ways 2007 was about the time we truly got serious and began making progress in retirement saving.
Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: wenchsenior on June 23, 2017, 12:15:45 PM
It's interesting that everyone keeps referring to 2007 rather than 2008 in their posts. Is it because the housing bubble began to burst in 2007 and the recession began then? Did you know  people losing houses and jobs in 2007? Because the financial crisis and stock market meltdown didn't occur until 2008...

Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: HPstache on June 23, 2017, 12:19:28 PM
It's interesting that everyone keeps referring to 2007 rather than 2008 in their posts. Is it because the housing bubble began to burst in 2007 and the recession began then? Did you know  people losing houses and jobs in 2007? Because the financial crisis and stock market meltdown didn't occur until 2008...

Probably because I put it as the year of interest in the poll.  I wanted to know what people's situation was BEFORE the crash in 2008 to get an idea of how different forum users experienced the crash of 2008 financially.
Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: prognastat on June 23, 2017, 12:28:39 PM
Being 28 now I didn't really experience the crash in any direct financial way. I had 0 investments and was still in school.

The only thing that I feel was a shame is that I wasn't able to get money into the market earlier in the recovery. This was both due to being late since by the time I was in a position to save it was already 2012/2013, but even then I wasn't aware of mustachianism or informed on investing. It wasn't until 2014-2015 that I really become more aware of retirement and then MMM and bumped up my contributions and investments. I wish I could have been able to and knowledgable enough to invest heavily from 2009 on.
Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: kendallf on June 23, 2017, 01:08:02 PM
I'm 50 now, and on Oct 10, 2007, at the approximate peak, I had $183k invested in the TSP.  I had just refinanced our home and taken cash out to buy ten acres of land in the sticks for $130k.  I had an interest only ARM loan on the property.  I had a HELOC on the house.  Yeah, we were leveraged as much as I could talk the banks into.

By 03/06/09 (the approximate bottom), we had $105k invested, I was in the hole on our house, our HELOC had been closed by the bank due to declining house values, the land developer had gone bankrupt, and I probably couldn't have given the 10 acres away.

You know what?  It didn't matter much.  I just rode my bike a lot and kept paying my bills.  My TSP account recovered to 184k  by June 2010, I bought a fixer upper house Jan 2013 (after finding MMM!) and renovated it, renovated the old house and sold it, and kept saving.  I still have that property and it may just now be finally recovering in value.  Lousy investment but maybe I'll build out there yet. 

If the market tanks and I lose half again, I'll just watch.  I don't need it and I'm working until 56 anyway for retirement health insurance. 
Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: secondcor521 on June 23, 2017, 01:58:51 PM
I'm 48 now.  I had bought my home in December 2006.  During the recession I was working steadily and investing maybe 10-20% of my income into 401(k)'s and IRA's and kids' college funds.

I am usually a very steady and methodical investor.  I clearly remember thinking at the depths of the crisis (I think it was the fall of 2008 when Lehman and the other banks were failing, and Congress *didn't* pass TARP one day), "Hmm, maybe this time it is different and the end of the financial system really is upon us."  I didn't sell, and continued buying, but I do remember being viscerally nervous.  I don't remember, but I think my logic was that most of the time when people say "This time is different" it isn't true; if it were true, well, I had bigger things to worry about.
Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: slugline on June 23, 2017, 02:10:22 PM
The people that would have truly experienced the recession would have been the ones that lost employment or sold assets at the bottom (by choice or not). I stayed employed, wasn't in a life situation where homeownership made sense, and did absolutely nothing with my investment accounts. So I can honestly say I didn't experience it. In fact, my net worth is about tripled since then, and I didn't even have my personal finance "ducks in a row" like I do now. So remember that Fidelity study about dead people's accounts performing best and think very carefully before making any panic transactions in response to what you read in the news.
Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: Spork on June 23, 2017, 03:46:47 PM
The people that would have truly experienced the recession would have been the ones that lost employment or sold assets at the bottom (by choice or not). I stayed employed, wasn't in a life situation where homeownership made sense, and did absolutely nothing with my investment accounts. So I can honestly say I didn't experience it. In fact, my net worth is about tripled since then, and I didn't even have my personal finance "ducks in a row" like I do now. So remember that Fidelity study about dead people's accounts performing best and think very carefully before making any panic transactions in response to what you read in the news.

This is a good point.  If you didn't sell (or better yet, if you continued to buy at the low on-sale prices) you probably came out WAY ahead.

In 2007, I was "pretired"... taking a planned 1 year sabbatical (that turned into 3 years ... because I moved to an area where my experience didn't match with the job market).  We were dying... not because our money was going to run out, but because we were living on a 'stash and wanted desperately to be investing in the down market.
Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: Blissful Biker on June 23, 2017, 11:16:41 PM
I am 45 and certainly hope to avoid another recession but am comfortable with my ability and fortitude to get through it successful.  In 2007 I owned a house and had about $500K in investments.  As the market dropped and dropped I just stayed busy with work and kids and consistently made my biweekly contributions.  Tried to keep a good attitude and focus on the pleasure of buying cheap investments.
Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: Chairman on June 23, 2017, 11:45:55 PM
1. 40s
2. 0
3. No
Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: kendallf on June 24, 2017, 09:26:11 AM
However due to the very high amount of foreclosures at the time it sometimes took the bank a year or more to actually foreclosebor short sale the houses even after people quit paying their mortgage.

This was very true in FL as well.  Some relatives of mine stayed in a house for at least two years without making mortgage payments, and were never foreclosed on.  They eventually moved and one of their friends who is a real estate agent arranged a short sale to her daughter.  No idea how the legality of that all played out..
Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: kendallf on June 24, 2017, 09:30:40 AM
This is pretty much where most of my friends where in 2007 - leveraged to the max with interest onlybARMs with huge ballon payments due at some point - all used to fund a luxury lifestyle. Problem was they all lost their jobs so eventually lost their very underwater houses too. Plus much or all their investments which they used to make their house payments while unemployed (most were in their late 30s or early 40s with kids). Hard to makeca $4k or higher house payment on unemployment.

I was lucky to have a stable gov't job.  If I had been unemployed for even a few months, my house of cards would've come tumbling down as well.  I fantasized regularly during that period about stopping all of my mortgage payments and walking away.  FL is a recourse state (the bank can come after you for the balance after short selling your house); if I had been in a non-recourse state I might've done it.
Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: BTDretire on June 24, 2017, 12:49:15 PM
I'm 60+, looking at my Vanguard account, I had $379,281 on Jan 1, 2008.
On Feb 28, 2009, I had market losses of $208,940, My balance was $235,909,
because I coninued to put money in and dividends were paid.
 My 2007 home value peaked at $275,000, and in 2009 it had dropped to $140,000*.
So over all, I was down at least $345,000, maybe more but not worth the paper shuffling to find out..
 I stayed invested and continued investing, on 6-13-17 my Vanguard account hit 7 digits.
 "It's time in the market not timing the market" Unknown

 *today's value is $160,000 to $170,000.
Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: FIRE 20/20 on June 24, 2017, 02:53:18 PM
I'm old enough that I had what I thought was an enormous amount (probably only $20-50k, but it was all I had) invested back in 2000-2002 and a few hundred thousand back in 2008.  Not only that, but while the markets were crashing and the financial world seemed like it was about to end, I was laid off and it took a few weeks to find a new job.  Despite all that I was able to stay in the market.  I certainly do not think I'm special in any way - I knew a lot of other people who followed their investment strategy and kept going. 
Having been through both of those market blips I feel reasonably prepared as we head towards another recession whether it's next week or next decade.  I don't know when it's coming, but I know that it definitely is coming and I just need to stay the course.  I did twice before and I'm only going to be in a better situation for the third one of my adult life.  As long as the next one isn't brought about by the use of nuclear weapons or something similarly catastrophic I think I'll be ok. 

Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: Fomerly known as something on June 24, 2017, 05:02:45 PM
I had just over $100,000 and owned my home in 2007.  That home, yeah I finally was able to sell it last year in 2016.  It's a complicated tale but the co-op had annoying rules which didn't make it a good rental unless I was "forced to rent it."  I got lucky and had a renter for 4 years but I couldn't sell the place to an investor because of annoying co-op rules again.  I was happy to be rid of it last year.
Title: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: doublethinkmoney on June 24, 2017, 05:28:43 PM
Age: 32

I had a 401k from my high school job that I rolled over into a Roth IRA With about $2k

Just started my current job in 2006 and I probably had about $2k in there.

I also bought a house for $245k at 100 % financing that ended up tanking $100k in price and due to money and a divorce we ended up being foreclosed on.

I didn't know enough to bump my 401k investment up to the max (had it at 6% from 06-13) during the drop .... I now have it at 25% .

I didn't loose my job and had a steady income with great pay and benefits. But I definitely bought into the whole deal of "house prices always go up" and paid more for a home than I would now. Which resulted in a financial disaster for me due to the combo of recession and divorce.

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Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: geekette on June 24, 2017, 06:45:32 PM
Age: 57

Had about $500k in late 2007, which dropped by half.  It's into 7 figures now, since we just kept buying.  DH was laid off/retired in 2013.

We own our home, but we bought it in '93, and prices hadn't gone up much around here, so they didn't go down much either.  Nothing was selling, I'll say that.

A friend of ours moved to cash in '08, after the drop.  AFAIK, he's still in cash (and still working).
Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: PDXTabs on June 24, 2017, 08:57:51 PM
I also bought a house for $245k at 100 % financing that ended up tanking $100k in price and due to money and a divorce we ended up being foreclosed on.

I didn't know enough to bump my 401k investment up to the max (had it at 6% from 06-13) during the drop .... I now have it at 25% .

I didn't loose my job and had a steady income with great pay and benefits. But I definitely bought into the whole deal of "house prices always go up" and paid more for a home than I would now. Which resulted in a financial disaster for me due to the combo of recession and divorce.

You sound just like me in my 20s, except I put 3% down. I always put 4-6% into my 401(k) (just enough to get the match), and rarely more. Now I max it out.

A friend of ours moved to cash in '08, after the drop.  AFAIK, he's still in cash (and still working).

I know someone like this. What's the point of moving to cash AFTER the drop? Everything is 50% off!

I was 24 when I graduated college in June of 2007. I started work a couple days later and I think that I would have contributed $3600 to my 401(k) by the end of the year.
Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: gggggg on June 25, 2017, 04:42:30 AM
Age: 42

I had about 30k in an old-school mutual fund during the bubble/crash, also about 20k or so in my first 401k. It all dropped by about half, like most folks' accounts. I've done alot of rearranging since with my accounts, so not sure what it would have recovered to. I also bought my first house (condo) in '04. I'm not sure what it dropped down to, as I wasn't into financial stuff back then and didn't keep track. I'm still in the same condo (paid off) today, it's gained about 20k or so over my purchase price, which is pretty miserable in this area, though I don't care as I don't plan to move.
Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: jim555 on June 25, 2017, 05:00:07 AM
Age: 52

Avoided the crash, was in fixed income and no real estate at the time.
Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: BlueHouse on June 25, 2017, 06:23:05 AM
Age 49
162K in 401k in 2007.  Dropped to under $100k after the crash.
Bought home in 2005 for 350k on a 5/1 Interest only ARM. Value Dropped to $220. Now worth about $280k and I've been losing money on it as a rental for 5 years.
The 2008 crash shook me up a lot.  I had just recovered from the 2000 crash and was trying to start saving a lot and then 2008 happened.
I sold most of my holdings and moved into cash to avoid losing more. 
If I had lost my job, as so many others had, I would have been crushed financially just to keep making house payments.
I e learned a lot about investing and not panicking since then, but I am still very risk averse as a result of those two recessions and the effect they had on me. I have a tendency to keep too much in cash even now, but fear seems to overwhelm likely outcomes for me.
I was very lucky that I lived in an area where most people didn't lose their jobs. If I had still lived in my old state, I would have lost my job and my home. So maybe the crash of 2000 saved me from the crash of 2008.
Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: aGracefulStomp on June 25, 2017, 06:25:12 AM
I was relatively young - I got my first casual job while I was at Uni about a year after the GFC. Around that time, I read my first investing book, Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham, and recognised the GFC for what it was - a bargain sale. Immediately started investing.

I know how to ignore the panic when I have nothing to lose, but I'm curious/apprehensive about how I'll go when I have a lot invested.
 
Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: Spork on June 25, 2017, 10:04:41 AM
A friend of ours moved to cash in '08, after the drop.  AFAIK, he's still in cash (and still working).

I know someone like this. What's the point of moving to cash AFTER the drop? Everything is 50% off!


I have a friend like this, too.  And there is NO convincing him that the market isn't the dumbest, most volatile, money-losing place on earth.  He dumped everything he had after the drop and vowed never to go back. 
Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: BlueHouse on June 25, 2017, 01:21:41 PM

A friend of ours moved to cash in '08, after the drop.  AFAIK, he's still in cash (and still working).

I know someone like this. What's the point of moving to cash AFTER the drop? Everything is 50% off!
Because you don't know when it's "AFTER".  You could still be in the middle of the drop.  Fear of losing everything, especially once you've been through it previously, is a pretty strong feeling.  It really wasn't until I had A LOT more money that I felt I could afford to wait out another downturn...although I haven't really been through another downturn since then, so we'll see if I can make it through without another panic.  Even so, I still try to hedge my bets by decreasing my expenses as much as possible so that I can wait out another storm without the fear. 
Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: redbird on June 25, 2017, 01:59:35 PM
I'm 33. I owned a house during that time (not the one I own now). I sold the house in 2009, but didn't lose any money. I actually made a small amount from it. The house has lost value now though.

Excluding retirement accounts, I didn't have anything invested at the time. All of the investments happened after 2009. I just had a LOT of money sitting in low (but better than now!) earning savings/checking accounts.

The recession didn't impact me that much. My retirement accounts lost a lot of money, but they've earned that all back plus plenty more. I didn't lose my job. I wish I'd bought into the market sooner than I did so I could've taken more advantage of the big drop though.
Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: sparkytheop on June 25, 2017, 10:03:20 PM
38 now.  TSP isn't working for me right now, but I think I had about $80k invested at the end of 2007.  I just checked...  December 31, 2007, I had $67k invested.  December 31, 2008 it was up to $87k. 

I had sold the house I bought in 1998 to buy current house in 2005.  Due to a local spike in housing, I did that transaction at (almost) the perfect time.  Made an offer on a house that had been reduced in price on Monday, put my house on the market by the weekend, at $20k more than I could have the week before (town got big news, so housing prices went crazy, people wanted to buy up houses to rent out).  The only way it could have gone better was if I could hold the old house longer (by months, not years, it later was on the market for another $30k above my sell price.  I bought it for about $70k).

I was also fortunate to be in a stable government job.  I watched a lot of people in my town struggle once the recession hit.  For some reason, mostly just because I didn't really understand my investment options at the time, and I wanted to just let it "rest" for a little while, so I could do research, I moved all my money into the G fund (for those not familiar with TSP, the G fund is a government securities investment fund.  It does not make great interest, sometimes not above inflation, even if that is the goal.  However, it doesn't lose money interest-wise.)  This prevented any loses when the big drop came.  I didn't really know what to do after that, but I figured I needed to put it back so I could "buy low", so I moved most my money back into the market for the upturn.  I would never try to time the market, it was just how things worked out.  As a result of the move though, I only had one quarter with a loss, and it was only for about $2k.

Guys I worked with at the time had been through the recession in the 80s.  One of them said we were very fortunate.  He got his job with the government during that time.  He said he drove onto the site, and looked in the parking lot at all the new cars, and thought "these people have no idea there is a recession right now".  I think, for the most part, he was right.

ETA: I got to check my numbers today.  That move to G fund seemed to have saved my money in 2008.
Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: EscapeVelocity2020 on June 25, 2017, 11:28:32 PM
Great thread, but complicated poll!  I'm 43, but there's a lot more that goes in to what my circumstances were in 2007.  Let's see, our children were 4 and 2 years old, our friends were selling their starter homes and leveraging into the amazing homes that the easy loans made available...  oil had raced to $150/bbl and colleagues were jumping ship for instant double digit raises and/or cash bonuses.  I was interviewing fresh grads that didn't really care if they got the job, they already had several offers lined up.  The other new hires were partying hard and buying nicer cars than I'd ever owned.  Basically, I felt like a chump and had to reassure my wife that we had it good enough. 

I spotted an ad in the Houston Chronicle to join a company and live in Norway so I interviewed.  In March of 2007, all four of us were in business class on a KLM flight through Amsterdam.  We'd sold our home and our 2 cars and life was looking really good.  By 2008, I realized that we could save our way to that FI million, so I sold a bunch of international stock funds that had been soaring. 

But, as 2ndcor and BlueHouse pointed out, even though I dodged the worst of it, you never know if, just maybe, it was different this time.  I got back in too early and still lost about 250k (out of 750k) while listening to paranoia about AIG or some major international institution needing to declare bankruptcy or be 'unwound'.  Can you imagine the field day international lawyers, arbitrage investment groups, and a few institutional investors (the Big Shorter's) would have?  And there were several of these 'illiquid' institutions limping through the day, calling the Fed and Congress to bail them out.  Maybe they were solvent in the long run, but it was hard to know what was worse - suffering the imminent wave of collapse and rebuild, or prop up the system and see what happens.

Hopefully this is just a scary story that becomes slightly inconceivable to future generations, similar to things like WWII and the Holocaust.  Never to happen again because we learned valuable lessons, improved our systems, studied the history... 
Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: monstermonster on June 26, 2017, 10:03:05 AM
Age: 29 (30 in 2 weeks)

In 2007, I was just starting my second term of Americorps, making $800 per month, and I was setting $50 aside per month into a Roth IRA. I believe my balance in my Roth IRA back then was ~$500.
Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: anonymouscow on June 26, 2017, 10:22:28 AM
I bought a house in 2003, sold in 2010 for about 25% less than I bought it for. It was not an expensive place.

When the market crashed I can only remember wishing I had more money to invest. I pretty much put as much money as I could in and really didn't look at my accounts very often. I don't recall exactly but I know at one point the new money I invested at least doubled in value.
Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: sam on June 26, 2017, 10:33:09 AM
Fantastic thread.

I was only 19/20 at the time and had no money so nothing invested.

Northern Rock was a popular high street bank which early on had to be bailed out by the government.

I remember looking out of my window to see people queuing to get their money out of Northern Rock and then joining another queue 10 meters up the road to open an account with Nationwide!

I remember watching a video of the bottom of the market being broadcast on CNBC it showed Pension companies, Hedgefunds and retail investors.

Pension funds were slightly selling, hedge funds were doing nothing and retail investors were having a huge sell off!
Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: slschierer on June 26, 2017, 10:37:02 AM
I am 31, and I had just entered the workforce in 2007.  We purchased our first home in 2008, and we lost about $30,000 on it when we sold it in 2012 (ouch). 

I was investing 18% of my paycheck in my 401(k) and nervously watching the balance decline while trying to tell myself that "stocks were on sale."  The person sitting next to me, doing the same job as me, was let go.  Literally, thousands of people (and several friends) were let go from my company.  My job was awful:  I was in charge of Accounts Receivable, and I essentially made collections calls to big companies and Mom and Pop shops barely staying afloat.  I also sat in the Treasury department at my company, and I knew of the measures my company was taking or attempting to take in order to maintain our credit rating while our debt to cash ration ballooned. 

I would say that I was impacted.  Sure, I probably had less than $10k in investments at the end of 2007, but that didn't make the emotional impact less.  I am risk averse and a little bit too happy to keep big stashes of cash in the bank, and I know that it's due in a large part to the 2007 recession.
Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: omachi on June 26, 2017, 10:46:55 AM
Age 33-39. Had more than $100K invested. Owned a home (and a mortgage), which I bought in 2006.

The house is just now worth more than we paid for it. Never really cared, we needed a place to live and that just brought property taxes down. It's a nice house, not too big or expensive, good bones, great location. Still not planning to move.

Most of my investments were in the 401k at the time. Watched it dive in the recession and just kept putting more in.
Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: little_brown_dog on June 26, 2017, 11:35:36 AM
I’m 29 now and was 19-20 at the time of the great recession.  I had nothing invested and owned no property because I was still in college for my bachelor’s degree. I remember hearing a lot about the economic crisis at the time from news outlets and my parents, but because it didn’t really affect me at all, I didn’t pay much attention unfortunately. If I recall correctly, my dad said that he lost about 20-25% of his retirement account value.

The next recession that arrives will be our first as adults who are actually invested in what is going on. Intellectually I am prepared to see my investment values drop, and we are in a very good place financially to weather a recession thanks to the mustachian habits we developed over the last 5 years or so. I am concerned for my aging parents though -they are poised to retire in the next 5 years and they are relying heavily on selling their home at a high price. They still have a mortgage plus a large HELOC that they used for luxurious upgrades and silly spending decisions like vacations (yes, I know). They have decent retirement savings but really should have much more by this age. If the housing market tanks, they could lose out on >100k that they are really relying on to bolster their retirement funds. If their retirement portfolios also sustain a substantial hit, they won’t have really any time to make up for the loss due to their age (near 70). A double whammy like that will really put them at a much higher risk of running out of money sooner rather than later.
Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: 2Birds1Stone on June 26, 2017, 12:14:08 PM
Misread OP, can't correct poll choices.
Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: Lmoot on June 26, 2017, 02:31:41 PM
33, graduated college in 2007, had about 3k in a ROTH started by my grandfather. Didn't buy my house until 2009. Despite making less than 50k most years since my first permanent full time job in 2009, I think I am doing ok currently. I am investing up to my company's match (and have been from the beginning), but am currently focusing on investing in income property.

I did prepay my mortgage in chunks (still have the same house since 2009, which is being rented out), but cut that out for now, so I only owe about 40k on it.
Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: JSMustachian on June 26, 2017, 02:44:29 PM
Age: 32

I started investing after the 2008 crash. I had less than $3,000 invested in mutual funds at the time so I did not have much to lose. I enjoyed huge gains obviously as the market climbed back up because I started contributing more to my IRA.
Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: Chairman on August 23, 2017, 12:18:12 AM
I'm 60+, looking at my Vanguard account, I had $379,281 on Jan 1, 2008.
On Feb 28, 2009, I had market losses of $208,940, My balance was $235,909,
because I coninued to put money in and dividends were paid.
 My 2007 home value peaked at $275,000, and in 2009 it had dropped to $140,000*.
So over all, I was down at least $345,000, maybe more but not worth the paper shuffling to find out..
 I stayed invested and continued investing, on 6-13-17 my Vanguard account hit 7 digits.
 "It's time in the market not timing the market" Unknown

 *today's value is $160,000 to $170,000.
Love this story. Good on you for staying the course.
Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: SnackDog on August 23, 2017, 01:55:58 AM
We bought a house in the Bay Area in 2007. Market had dropped from peak in 2005 but dropped more after we bought. Company was offering huge purchase assistance programs which were the driver to buy at the time even though we didn't plan to stay long. Glad we have the house now and plan to live in it soon. Renters have paid mortgage and taxes last ten years.

Had plenty invested in 2007 and the portfolio flatlined as I poured money in just to maintain balance. Never really dipped so didn't scare me much. Was exciting reading the drama about the banks failing in the news.

The next drop will not be like the last so no advantage to those who are still fighting the last war. If our dear President starts a nuclear conflict in Korea/Japan/China that could roil markets in a new way, for example.
Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: EarthSurfer on August 23, 2017, 04:39:38 AM
I wish I had caught this thread a few months ago. I have been keeping monthly assets summaries and balance sheets for over 20 years.  These days I only use the historical data for a chart of my net worth.

On July 31, 2007:
 $108,994.77  - Cash & Cash equivalents
 $243,645.90  - Taxable Investment - Typically 80% stock / 20% bond, 50/50 US/International
 $268,016.99  - Tax Advantaged Investment - 401K and IRAs
 $196,000.00  - Condo - paid off in Boulder, Colorado
---------------
 $816,657.66 - Est Total Net Worth

I was 43 yrs, 10 months of age, near the end of a 2 year break from working ("3rd retirement"), and was thruhiking the Continental Divide Trail.

Total Assets would peak on 11/2007 at  $840,219.06, bottom out on 3/2009 at  $659,033.25 (I bought a rental condo CHEAP!), and I recovered to my 11/2007 peak on 4/2010 or approximately  $848,883.48 .

On 9/2012, I passed $1,000,000, mostly due to the growth in real estate values. I had moved into the rental condo, and would sell after 2 yrs to minimize the tax on the sale.

Total assets on 8/2017 are approximately  $1,424,903.11. Since 8/1/2007, I have worked 54 months full time employment, and about 24 months at 50% time as a consultant / contractor.
Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: jlcnuke on August 23, 2017, 05:44:54 AM
I sold the first house I owned in April of 2009. I imagine everyone here can recognize that was close to the worst possible time to sell, and I was not happy writing the check at closing to get out of that house...
Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: KarefulKactus15 on August 23, 2017, 12:48:00 PM
I didnt see the house option.  Is there a way to update my poll choice?  I only picked 2
Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: Whatsername on August 23, 2017, 01:21:30 PM
I bought my first house in December 2008. I got the $7500 credit that I had to pay back while my buddy closed in January 2009 and got the $8000 credit he didn't have to pay back SMH. Sold that house when we moved in 2015 and bought a new one. Zero invested in 2007 but we've come a long ways since then and I hopefully will be FIRE in 10 years.
Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: Michael in ABQ on August 23, 2017, 01:33:19 PM
32 now and I had a decent stock portfolio in 2007 of around $15k that I had built up using money saved from a deployment a couple of years earlier and investing some money from student loans. However, I graduated college in 2008, took a couple of months to land a job and was only making about $35k total household income with a wife and new baby to support. Living beyond our means that stock portfolio got sold off over the next year or two just to cover living expenses. Unfortunately it was all single stocks, mostly in financial stocks that were hit very hard in the recession. I think my total realized losses were around $8k and some of those companies still haven’t come close to recovering a decade later (those that didn’t get bought up). I also had $6,500 invested in two small businesses that I totally lost over the next few years. Still don’t own a home as we only recently finished paying off all our debts, including those 10-year old student loans.

I've since learned my lesson and just stick to index/mutual funds in my 401k and TSP. Those are up to about $50k now. It certainly helped starting my 401k in 2008 when the market was dropping like crazy. Of course saving 3-4% of my meager paycheck didn't add up to a whole lot. If I had bought some of my company's stock back then at around $3/share I would have done quite well as it's been in the $30s for the last couple of years. I have some in my 401k but dollar cost averaging over almost a decade has dropped my average returns quite a bit.
Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: Re3iRtH on August 23, 2017, 08:32:13 PM
PLEASE READ:  You must choose 3 options, one from each sub-question for this poll to work well!  Input your CURRENT age.

I wanted to create a poll as a spin-off of the most recent MMM blog regarding the coming of the next recession.  I am curious to know how many of us really experienced the great recession in 2008 from a financial perspective.  So to help determine this, I would like to know:

1.  How old are you now?
2.  How much did you have invested in the stock market in 2007 (obviously, this will be approximate for most of us, so take your best guess)
3.  Did you own a home in  2007?

What do you think it took for someone to really "experience" the great recession?  I personally think it's only for people over about 35 with over $100K invested, or $50K invested and a newly purchased home.

Do you think you financially experienced the great recession?  Me personally, I am 32, started working right in 2007.  I had maaaaybe $10K invested at the time.  I did buy a rental duplex in 2007 to live & rent and it lost some value over the next years.  But all-in-all I did not experience the great recession financially.

Because this poll doesn't tabulate well, I will update the percentages for each sub-question periodically:

18U: 2%
19-25: 7%
26-32: 29%
33-39: 29%
40-49: 22%
50-59: 10%
60+: 2%

Less than 50K invested: 65%
50K-100K invested: 9%
$100K+ invested: 27%

Owned home: 45%
Did not own home: 55%


I was in a very similar financial situation as you. I was 22, just started medical school, earning a modest $50-55K/yr., and had the equivalent of probably $10K in IRAs (if that). Since then, I have generated a 7-figure real estate portfolio that produces monthly income. And like the last reply said, I learned my lesson early and have always stayed out of the stock market for the most part.
Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: lexde on August 24, 2017, 07:55:08 AM
I'm 27. Had about $16K invested, was 17 so no home. I live with my SO now who owns his home. So I definitely did not experience the recession.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: Unique User on August 24, 2017, 09:09:04 AM
I'm 47 and don't remember what we had invested in 2007, but it was around $500k.  It dropped  a lot, I didn't look at statements until the end of 2009 when I decided to take stock of where we stood.  We also bought a house and a rental house in 2007, both have just recently recovered their values and are worth about what we paid for it.  Luckily when we had to move, we were able to rent it out our house for more than expenses and the rental house has been rented almost continuously since 2007.  Everything has more than recovered and more since we both got jobs in 2009 and starting funneling cash into our accounts.  We're on track to FI in 2021. 
Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: Abe Froman on August 24, 2017, 09:46:01 AM
Currently 42.
Back in 2007 I was 32 , subtraction with 10s are a little easier for me.

In Jan of 2007 I had $125K.
In Dec of 2007 I ended up with $220K.

Story was .... prior to 2007 - (2002-ish) I was lucky with selling a domain name and after buying a used sailboat, and a new car, I didn't know what to do with the extra cash - so I just dumped it into a Fidelity Fund and forgot about it.
Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: DirtDiva on August 24, 2017, 07:07:04 PM
Currently 52

On 12/25/2007:  We owned $226,000 in investments
On 12/26/2008:  We owned $164,000 in investments, despite saving $36,000 into our 401k's and $6,000 into our HSA.
By 12/18/2010:   We were back to $316,000 

Our house lost 30k in value, but we were able to refinance to 15 years at 2.75% interest, so there was that.

My spouse's business suffered greatly and his income fell by 50%.

Our strong points were my job (medical field, about as safe as it gets) and fixed expenses that were way below our income.   We never considered selling stocks- we were 42 years old, with no plans to retire for many years. 

I think it helps to not pay too much attention to the daily financial news.   Diversify, dollar cost average, stay the course...all that Boglehead stuff.
Title: Re: POLL: What is your CURRENT Age, and how much did you have invested in 2007?
Post by: clarkfan1979 on August 25, 2017, 02:11:44 PM
I experienced many positives from the great recession.

I sold about 30K worth of stock in March 2007 to purchase a home in May 2007 while in grad school. I got 3 roommates to pay the mortgage and I lived for free. Even though May 2007 wasn't a good time to buy a house nationally, it was a great time to buy a house locally in Fort Collins, CO. I purchased the home for 182K and it's currently worth about double at 365K.

I didn't see the stock market crash coming. I just thought buying a house and renting out the rooms while in grad school for 4-5 years would be a better move than sitting on 30K in the stock market. I still remember the phone call with my stock broker. He kept on telling me that I was making a huge mistake. I think I did ok.

After grad school, I kept the house as a rental. It currently rents for $2200/month and the mortgage is $985. We moved to Florida and bought a primary house for 95K in 2012. It was the very end of the housing recession in Florida. It's currently worth about 235K. We moved to Hawaii two years ago and decided to also rent out the Florida house instead of selling it. The rent is $1700/month and the mortgage is $625/month.

I teach college and my job is unaffected by recessions. I can't wait for the next one!