I think it has affected us but positively. Jue got sick of those £6 an hour jobs and is now self employed.., its not easy if u get a bad week or two but its much better working for yourself even so. And I suspect that if u can provide goods cheaply, u'll find yourself more popular, not less.
I also remember the last recession and was briefly unemployed during it. Then, there just weren't cheap shops, very few cheap brands in mainline supermarkets and buying food was a nightmare. Now buying food inexpensively is easy if u are prepared to shop around. I was actually quite shocked when I went into Asda's recently at how relatively expensive things there were as I am so used to going to the budget chains.
Because of the newly self employed status of the family, Christmas is going to be a bit limited but think I can manage to get one main present for the kids rather than really, wasting money on lots of things they play with for five mins before getting bored. Making sure that what they do get, they really will enjoy and play with over and over rather than getting a mountain of stuff they don't really want. Not totally comfortable with it but I think it'll work out. Next year will be better tho!