By Jose, Teen Portal Staff Writer
Gas prices are high, food prices are high and that Hershey's bar you got in your hand is probably more expensive than it was before. You may even worry that the current economic crisis could have grave consequences on your future (i.e. your ability to pay for college or get a job).
These are hard economic times upon us, but it is no Great Depression as many in the media might lead you to suspect. Sure, your parents might have had to downsize that 16th birthday party bash you were planning, or maybe you can’t afford to shop at the same stores where you once bought your clothes, but it is not that bad. From what I understand, the economy is in a slump, and it will be just a few months to a few years before we are back to pre-2007 days. We will live but things could be pretty tough for awhile.
Short history lesson: What started this mess was the subprime mortgage crisis and the rising costs of homes to the extent where few people could actually afford to pay their mortgages. As people bailed or defaulted on their home loans, banks got stuck with so many homes that they could not sell them all at the same time. (For a more in depth look on the cause of the financial crisis, visit a previous article that dealt with this topic).
So how does this affect you? Well, perhaps your parents have put aside a college savings plan for your future. Over the past decade, it has seen tremendous growth, going higher and higher and higher, to perhaps where you did not need to worry about paying for college. Then, in the past few months, it went *plunk* near the bottom. Now, as you near your high school graduation, perhaps your family is more worried then ever about paying for college. Then, there is the situation with college loans, which are scarce at the current time due to market scares. Only the people with near perfect credit ratings can get secured for a low-interest loan, while the rest are hit with higher interest rates (if they even get a loan).
Same goes for that pretty sweet car you see yourself driving around. You may want it, and your parents may grudgingly decide to get it for you. So they take you to the car lot and after haggling with the salesperson, the bank decides not to loan them the money for it, thereby no car for you. But perhaps that’s a good thing with the way gas prices are roller-coastering. At the time of writing, gas prices were at about $2.60 for a gallon of gas in Arlington. Whether they go up or go down, in the end it would cost a lot to drive that car.
You also might have recently lost your job due to falling revenues and your employer having to ax a few employees to keep the profits in the green. So you go around town, looking for new work, and can not find that many options that really interest you, or that pay that well (not that your old job paid well in the first place). In the current economic downturn, companies have to resort to firing employees to save money and to keep rolling until the economy gets back up. So now you can not buy anything you want, and you feel bored. You can not pay for a car, or buy gas for that matter. Worse, you can not put any money in a bank to save for college. You worry that you may not be able to pay for college at all.
But things will get better because history shows us that the economy will straighten itself out again. As far as I can tell, in about one to two years the economy should fix itself unless a bigger problem lies beneath the surface. As for your future, just look at the glass as half full. The economy gets hit with a blast every one to two decades, and people before us have survived. In the end, we will come out much better. We will get back to where we were in 2004, before this mess happened.
