Scoliosis: Has the credit crunch affected your Scoliosis?

So, how does a credit crunch come about and why has this affected me?

Well, a credit crunch is more often than not caused by a long period of careless and inappropriate (in other words the banks have borrowed more money than they can afford) lending which results in losses for lending institutions and investors in debt when the loans turn sour.

A knock on effect of the credit crunch is the reduced availability of credit. The cost of accessing credit is increased and thus raising interest rates.

This loss in credit available is making times hard for everyone around the globe, the changing of money from business to business or person to person is dramatically affected and even sound businesses are finding that cash flow is become harder and harder each month, their bank loans are slowing down and generally everyone is feeling like the World is going to stop spinning - it's not is it?

The reason I am bringing this subject up on my Scoliosis blog is because a few months ago, paying for my alternative treatments or exercise classes wasn't really an issue, I knew each month how much money I needed to fund my treatments and that was it, there were no worries or thoughts of how we were going to pay our mortgage this month, we just paid what we wanted to pay for and got on wirth life, cash flow rolled in, new work was scheduled and life was ticking over pretty nicely.

All of a sudden one day we woke up (or so it seemed anyway) and the money just seemed to stop flowing, invoices started to pile up, UN-PAID, and then BAM, the bank is empty, our customers just stopped paying!

We found ourselves in a situation where we needed to kick back and have a re-think here, this was all of a sudden serious, only a few weeks previously were we saying "this credit crunch isn't affecting us", little did we realise just how much it was going to affect us - we just hadn't sussed out how!

My Pilates month is now over on Thursday and if I wish to continue I need to pay again - €85, now, €85 isn't a lot of money, especially when you consider that Pilates is twice a week for an hour a session, but hold on a minute, there is credit crunch, every penny now counts and we plan on saving as much as we can and still being frugle, we don't want to find ourselves in a situation where we don't have rainy day money again, so ultimately something has to give and unfortunately luxury items are the first to go, and yeah you may say that back care is not a luxury item but when it comes to a toss up between exercise and eating, everyone would choose eating right?

Now I am not saying I cannot afford Pilates but my plight here, is, should I? Should I pay out this money and then risk not being paid by clients and wishing I had that €85 in my back pocket because "€85 will buy a lot of food", I also have to consider the 2 hours driving in the week that is required to get to class and back, that is fuel consumption and in this dwindling crisis we find ourselves in I am even looking at where we can save money on travelling and only making necessary journeys!

Dear, o dear, how did we get here, through no fault of our own either and what sickens this issue even more is the people who have been at the head of these companies get a nice fat check to resgin and who pays that? The chuffing tax payer, so, let me get this straight, you cock it all up, get greedy, lend too much money and now cannot afford to pay it back and we bail you out? And then to piss people off even more, we give them half a million pounds worth of tax payers money so they can continue their "way of life" - excuse me, what about my way of life? Oh yeah, we don't matter do we, we just pay our tax and keep the country running...........

So yeah, the credit crunch has affected my Scoliosis in more ways than one, who is going to save me if my company fails and I have to get a job? Who is going to give me a payout so I can continue my way of life and afford to pay for my exercise? Who is going to home me when I lose my house because I can't pay the mortgage? Nobody that's who, the banks have been hiding their dirty little secrets for so long and now the cat is out of the bag and trust me it is spaying all over the chuffing place, us tax payers are not so dumb anymore and I really think this World is trying to force some kind of revolution, haven't we been pushed about for long enough?

Let's face it, the people who work make the World go round, if it wasn't for tax payers there would be no big fat checks for payouts!!!!

I think I have ranted enough about this subject but I wanted to share my thoughts with you and see how you are fairing the credit crunch and have you had to cut back on health care or luxury items because of the current climate?