Our finanicial position has actually improved dramatically in the last year....but I know we are very blessed and don't take it for granted thats for sure.

DH was promoted, and also the company he works for was bought out by another company that are moving all their operations to the site he works on. This is great for dh because the new company pays much, much, much better than the old company, but it meant that about 400 people that worked at the old site lost their jobs, unless they were prepared to move from the city to the country. On the upside, once full opertions have moved here, there should be about 500 extra jobs eventually.

I work for myself part time in the hair and beauty industry, and suprisingly in any finanicial crisis, our industry seems to boom, people spend money on looking good to make themselves feel better when they can't afford a holiday etc. Go figure!

Our mortgage is fixed, but this unfixes next year, so I think it was a good move, because we rode out all the interest rate increases, and the savings of being fixed out weigh the savings on the reduced rates now.