How to Survive a Depression: Simple Steps yet Powerful

It's holiday so you decided to go shopping. You've brought with you 2,000 $. You were surprised because of few items you have bought with the money you have. Few years ago, you can buy many goods out of the amount you have. You now feel that you really are affected with the great depression. How many of you have felt this way? If you have not fully understood what I mean, why don't you try listing down what you have bought out of your salary, then try comparing the goods you've purchased five or even just three years ago. You know it’s time to ask how to survive a depression. Depression is described as a sustained, long downturn in one or more economies. It is worse than a recession. What is recession compared to depression. Recession is seen as a normal downturn in the business cycle. Depression on the other hand is a rare and extreme form of recession and is characterized by abnormal increase in unemployment, restriction of credit, shrinking output and investment, numerous bankruptcies, and reduced amounts of trade and commerce. Anywhere in the world presently depression is felt. It is a verity that we experience an economic financial crisis and we worry for recession effect or worse the effect of depression. Economists say that depression encompasses two general rules and these are a decline in real GDP exceeding 10% and recession lasting for 3 or more years. Other economists also adhere to other theories. Wikipedia tells us about great depression and long depression. The former affected most national economies in the world throughout the 1930s. It was considered to have begun with the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the crisis quickly spread to other national economies. The US GDP was decreased by 33% and the unemployment increased to 25%. The Long Depression is actually the “Great Depression” still but the term long was used since it lasted for more than two decades - 23 years to be exact. That is from 1873 to 1896. A famous adage tells us “History repeats itself”. This proves to be true since depression is now recurring. We fear of our life during the great depression. We also ask how to survive a depression. This economic downturn pushes us to have a crisis management plan. To survive the great depression we have to differentiate our needs and wants. We often confuse these two words. Because of the proliferation of goods, we are confused. We think all that is advertised in TV and in the internet are what we need. Every now and there is innovation of technology like the use of cellphones, TV, MP3, MP4, MP5, digital camera and many more. We'd love to have more and most especially we want to have the latest. There is no better way to survive the depression by living within our means. We have to buy only what we need and we need to save for the future. After all we want to survive and we want to surpass this depression.