1. I stopped going to Starbucks:
It seemed so innocent. I stopped buying hugely overpriced coffee and thoroughly addictive blueberry muffins several months ago. "I live in London," I thought. "What harm could it do?" Then Starbucks closed 600 shops worldwide. Totally my fault. And I'm still going to bi-weekly Starbucks Anonymous meetings and following the 12 Steps. (God grant me the courage to be tired and listless, and to ignore the temptations of the delicious buttery muffin goodness...)
2. I didn't change my mortgage:
Honestly, I'm not sure how this caused the recession, but I know mortgages were involved and I know that we took the cheapest interest free mortgage we could get and it was like a 95% mortgage and so I'm pretty sure it's involved in the whole thing. Somehow. Not sure.
3. I had a child:
This meant I stopped going out, buying stuff for myself or indulging in any kind of whimsical spending (apart from one nice anniversary present for my wife, but I bought that instead of a suit for work that, frankly, I could really use). It meant budgeting all spending all the time. Novelty toy shops, t-shirt vendors, musicians, DVD and CD stores and movie theatres have all borne the brunt of this, cut off from a regular stream of completely unnecessary spending.
4. I got a pension fund:
It has about 12,000 British pounds sterling in it right now. That's 12,000 I could have spent on things like flat screen TVs, a better car, new bay windows for my house and other whimsical items. Plus, that 12,000 is tax free, which means less money for the government to use bailing out banks and stuff.
5. I stopped paying into my pension:
This happened a few years ago when I realised there were other things I needed to spend my money on (see "I had a child" above). The fund has been losing money ever since. If I'd been a good citizen and continued to pay into the pension, it would be buying up all those cheap-o stocks right now and holding up the market a bit. Instead, it just keeps losing money and I'm not doing anything to shore it up.
6. I paid off my credit cards:
Banks make shitloads on credit card interest. But not from me. Sorry banks.
7. I scoured the internets:
As it turns, a lot of the stuff I like, stuff I used to have to pay, is available for free online. Stuff like music (myspace is still pretty kewl and Last.fm proves I'm not the only person who likes Shriekback and MTV.com has every video ever nearly), TV shows and films (Hulu is awesome), books (most of the classics are online, plus a helluva lot of Cory Doctorow's stuff) and even furniture (Craigslist and our local community forums have loads of stuff up for free).
9. I started to worry about the planet:
Al Gore's actually partially to blame for this. An Inconvenient Trust freaked me out so much that my wife and I started doing crazy things like turning off lights in rooms we weren't using (this was most of the rooms in the house, which makes our place look like an abandoned building sometimes - I wouldn't be surprised to find squatters living in our back bedroom some day), not leaving things on standby (TV, DVD player, toaster, microwave - you'd be amazed how much it costs to keep a glorified clock turned on 24 hours a day), turning the heat on when we were cold (not just because we were a bit chilly) and not throwing stuff away arbitrarily (composting and recycling where possible). Energy providers, oil & gas companies, second hand shops and garden centres have all suffered as a consequence.
Basically, I stopped spending so much money, didn't so waste much stuff and generally tried to think thrifty. And then the entire economy collapsed. I feel pretty bad now. I'm a bad person.
Sorry.
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