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August 9, 2012 | 7 notes

Ruth, former senior civil servant: I was the corporate director of a local authority until 2004, when I was made redundant. It was very well paid but I still managed to work as a consultant.

But by 2007 work dried up and we were struggling to pay the mortgage, leading to our home being repossessed. I was offered a job in Cumbria, so after 33 years in London we moved north, which was a wrench for us both because we didn’t know anybody at all. After two years I was made redundant again, a month before I was due any redundancy payment in March 2010.

I’ve now been offered a job in Lancashire and will live away from home during the week with my brother. I’m starting at the bottom again and it will be quite hard. Both of us live on benefits, which is unbelievably strange having worked my whole life. At times I’ve been at rock bottom and find it difficult mentally. You feel like an outcast. When you’re not working you don’t feel part of society and you have no value to give.

The credit crisis - five years on: so often we hear about how big business and banks have been affected by the financial crisis that came into realisation on 9 August 2007. Here our readers tell us what it’s been like for the individual

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