Jennifer Obakhume, 20, Los Angeles, CA
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The recession is already making a big wave when it comes to education. A lot of high school students are having problems trying to get in and those of us who are in college are having problems trying to find funding. So this is going to prove to be a pretty sticky couple of years. Hopefully in the next two or three years or so, the recession will start to reverse itself and more money will come back in and then money can be returned to education. But education is going to go a little downhill…Jobs are leaving left and right. Young people need jobs -- summer jobs, jobs during school to pay for books, clothing, and things like that. We are already as students in the poorest parts of our lives. And we’re about to get a lot poorer before we start to experience some income intake with jobs.
Assyria Shabazz, 15, New York, New York (Youth Mic)
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The recession has impacted me because I hear about it a lot at school. A lot of people are running around, they are like, “Oh my goodness, what’s going to happen to my finances? How am I going to take care of myself?” I hear lots of old people, elderly people talking about how they are going to pay for social security. And there’s lots of young people worrying about, like “Oh, what about my inheritance. How will this affect my financial situation?” Then again, there are also a lot of people who it doesn’t affect. You still see the same people saying “Oh, I wanted this and then I got it, even though it’s X amount of dollars. Blah Blah Blah.” For me, it really hasn’t impacted my financial situation – it’s largely the same. I still live on a budget -- the same budget that I did before. So that’s one thing I do.
Fernando Bustos, 17, San Lorenzo, California
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The recession has affected me in my house. We spend less and we have to save more money. We can’t buy all these brand name foods at these high prices right now. Since my Dad was laid off of work a couple months ago, we have to adapt to this new way of living and saving money.
03/13/2009
Cheyenne Johnson, 16, Atlanta, Georgia
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The economic crisis has affected me severely because I’m trying to find a summer job and it’s kind of hard because you know McDonalds, Burger King, all the fast food places are taken by adults who are trying to find a job…And I want to work so badly because my mom – she’s making me pay for my school clothes, well, half of them and I’m trying to buy a car. My mom is always the one who works hard. We can still make it because she has two other jobs and she’s looking for a third one. And it pays off in the end.
Devin Glenn, 16, New York, New York (Youth Mic)
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The recession has impacted me in that I really don’t think that I’ll be able to pay for college. My family doesn’t have the money to pay for the colleges that I want to go to. And this situation that we are in right now doesn’t seem to be getting any better in the next couple years, and hopefully it won’t get any worse because that would just be disastrous. I’m signing up for a lot of scholarships to hopefully get the money that I need to go to college…And hopefully if everything turns out right, I will get that extra push that I need to go to college.
03/12/2009
D Marcus Butler, 18, Atlanta, Georgia
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I usually buy a little treat from the gas stations/convenience stores called donut sticks. And a while ago, they were 50 cents, but now they are 75 cents, so I can’t buy them any more because I’m not willing to cough up the extra 25 cents for donut sticks. More seriously, going to college it means I have to look harder for scholarships and grants because I’m not trying to let this economic crisis as it may be prevent me from going to school. I’m trying to go into graphic design and my thought process is that they can’t outsource creativity. So, hopefully it will still be around by the time I’m ready to get into the work force.
Kelly Chau, 18, Oakland, CA
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Ever since the recession hit, I really had to cut back on my spending - on clothes specifically. I would usually buy 3 sets of clothes each month. Now I can only buy one set every couple of months. Doesn’t mean I’m going to necessarily go buy less fashionable clothes or junkier clothes if you may. It just means that I’m going to buy what I like or not buy anything at all. As for how I’m feeling, I’m just really worried just like everyone else about the recession and everything else that might be affected by it. I might be worried about my career as well. I should be.
03/11/2009
Ana Castillo, 26, Los Angeles, CA
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I think young generations right now are already living with a lot of stress factors in their family or in their community. And seeing their parents stress out about money or losing their jobs or not knowing if next week their parents are going to get laid off -- they carry that to school. They carry that in their everyday lives. They keep going with their days, but it’s in the back of their head. They are living it as much as the adults are.
Ashley Trent, 15, NY, NY (Youth Mic)
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The recession has impacted me both negatively and positively. In the negative, I have to be more frugal when it comes to spending money…In the positive because now I’m a stronger person, I’ve been through harder times, and also it’s making me more financially responsible and I think that would make my parents proud. When the recession started really hitting, basically my parents and my brother, we all came down to the sitting room and had family talk and discussed ways we could really pinch everything so we wouldn’t have to think about where our money was coming from next. We just wanted to really spread our money really far out.
03/10/2009
The economic news has been bad of late, but there we're some signs of hope today as the Dow rose 379 points. Is this the begining of a rally? A drop in the bucket? Does anyone know what's really going on?
Jon Vongal, 16, Atlanta, Georgia
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Personally, the economy has affected me in many ways. My job at Vine restaurant was terminated because of the economy. The restaurant closed because no one was going I guess as a result of the economy. People need to spend money or the economy won’t get any better. I spend all my paychecks in a day on the economy. I hope people do the same. Stop taking your money out of the stock market and out of the banks or it will just cause a downward spiral.
Ahmina James, 18, Berkeley, California
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The recession has really affected my future. Because I was thinking about going to college, but now I’m not so sure. Things really hit home for me when I was sitting in a circle in my class and we were talking about student loans and how much college is going to cost and how most of us in the class are not able to afford college and our parents don’t make a lot of money and we just got really worried. My mom is like: “You better apply for as many scholarships and grants as you can because I have no money.” And it’s like, “Man!”
Jon Vongal