handling finances when you're between jobs

[Anonymous]

Like many in the DC area I'm newly unemployed.

I spent today going through our finances, and until I find another job, we're going to need about 5K / month just to break even.

In looking at the numbers there just isn't a way for us to close the gap without moving, which I don't want to do at this point in time.

Here's my list of things that will help close the gap:

- Stop all house cleaning & gardening help and do it ourselves
- Pulling the kids from summer camp the rest of the summer. (They're happy about this so don't feel sad for them)
- DH can stop contributing to his 401K so we have extra cash coming in. (Is this a bad idea?)
- Cancel our composting service and deal with it ourselves
- Cut out all unnecessary spending on personal stuff (clothes, books etc)
- Shave 20% of our grocery bill (no more prepared foods; buy bulk stuff online)
- No dining out. (We did very little dining out anyway so we don't have much to gain here.)
- Wind down charitable donations. (I feel crappy about this but I have a few recurring donations that are a couple hundred bucks a month that we could use right now.)

The rest of the gap I can fill with savings for a while.

What else am I missing?

[Anonymous]

Internet/cable/cell phone bills
Shop your insurance maybe

Consider having DH still contribute to get a match.

[Anonymous]

What is dh' s income?

Did you apply for unemployment? What's your severance?

Why the knee-jerk reaction to sell the house?

Sounds like you had a lot of disposable income that you were freely spending without a 2nd thought based on what you're scaling back on. Thats a great start to eliminate the indulgences.

[Anonymous]

See if you can open a promo rate 0% interest credit card (like Chase Slate) to cover any big unexpected expenses that come up (car repairs, medical bills not totally covered by insurance, etc) while you search for a job. Then pay it off once you are employed again.

[Anonymous]

Stop allowance for the kids. Is your expertise something where you can pivot to consulting, or getting temporarily hired to do some contract work for someone else?

[Anonymous]

Can you do something like rover especially over the summer? Kids might enjoy it and 2 dogs could easily be 60$ a day.

[Anonymous]

Bit of a longshot but check those unclaimed money databases

I did have a few things there

[Anonymous]

My spouse was unemployed for six months and the two most impactful things we did were:

- Stopped almost all online purchases. If we wanted to buy something, we added it to the list and we bought it at a brick and mortar store. If it was something that we could not find in person or was much cheaper online, we added it to our Amazon cart, but left it there for at least a week (sometimes we ended up not needing it and took it out of the cart altogether). Our credit card bill was significantly lower based on this alone. Like over $1000/month. It's insane how much money we spent online. We've carried this into our normal day to day now, we won't go back to constant online purchases anymore.

- Stopped eating out/ordering in. We planned our meals and saved a lot of money that way.

It wasn't a huge amount, but we did pause streaming services we weren't using much.

We already do our own yard work, cleaning, etc., so we didn't have those extra expenses to cut.

[Anonymous]

How much do you spend? Where is your savings?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Like many in the DC area I'm newly unemployed.

I spent today going through our finances, and until I find another job, we're going to need about 5K / month just to break even.

In looking at the numbers there just isn't a way for us to close the gap without moving, which I don't want to do at this point in time.

Here's my list of things that will help close the gap:

- Stop all house cleaning & gardening help and do it ourselves
- Pulling the kids from summer camp the rest of the summer. (They're happy about this so don't feel sad for them)
- DH can stop contributing to his 401K so we have extra cash coming in. (Is this a bad idea?)
- Cancel our composting service and deal with it ourselves
- Cut out all unnecessary spending on personal stuff (clothes, books etc)
- Shave 20% of our grocery bill (no more prepared foods; buy bulk stuff online)
- No dining out. (We did very little dining out anyway so we don't have much to gain here.)
- Wind down charitable donations. (I feel crappy about this but I have a few recurring donations that are a couple hundred bucks a month that we could use right now.)

The rest of the gap I can fill with savings for a while.

What else am I missing?

I don’t do any of that to begin with! At least you have easy expenses to cut.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How much do you spend? Where is your savings?

Our monthly expenses right now are 12K, and DH's current take home pay after 401K and HSA stuff is taken out is about $4500/month. We also get $2500 from renting out his house. I was the primary breadwinner, and 12K was reasonable based on what I was making. The 12K includes both mortgages, 401K contributions etc.

No question we were spending too freely online and I'm actually happy to be putting the breaks on that.

I have about 40K in savings account at a bank, and the rest is in index funds.

Severance will last me through the end of September. I applied for unemployment.

As for consulting, getting something part time etc, I will 100% do everything I can to make up some of the difference that way. But I want to get a solid handle on the financial piece first so I know what we're dealing with.

[Anonymous]

When my spouse lost his job (he was the breadwinner, I made 10% of what he did), we stopped everything but the mortgage, groceries and medications, plus kids activities. And had he not gotten a new job when he did, the kids activities would have been next on the chopping block as well.

[Anonymous]

What is a composting service?

[Anonymous]

Economize on utilities - especially A/C electrical. If your water bill is high, make sure you're using water efficiently.

Shop grocery store sales explicitly. Understand the markup patterns and couponing at the different stores you use.

Learn to have more free or almost free fun. Smithsonian and library booksales would be two of my recos. Also I enjoy thrifting.

[Anonymous]

Sorry to say this but you need to plan on this being a long term unemployment, so you need to start from scratch on your budget.

Make a list of all the things you absolutely have to spend on:
Mortgage (PITI)
Utilities
Food (only Aldi. If it doesn't come from ALDI you don't buy it).
ONE streaming service (buy an antenna so you can watch TV over the air. There's a lot of free good stuff there)
Internet (but try to economize there.)
Cell Phones (no new phones until they die and look around to make sure you have the cheapest service).

Cut all the rest. Everything.

Live this way for six months.

Put all of your expenses in a spreadsheet and cut and cut and cut. Examine to make sure you've cut enough.

Once your bills are fully under control, you can start adding more back in.

Clothes: don't buy unless absolutely needed. If you're like me your kids' clothes drawers are over-stuffed. If you need more, shop Target online and thrift stores. There is good stuff in both places. No new clothes for the adult who isn't working. Only new work clothes for workplace adult.

So much fun free stuff in the DC area. Only do that. Lists abound as to what you can do for free. If you live in DC make sure to get the free metro pass for your kids and use that to get around.

If you cut all of this and still can't make ends meet without moving, then you have to move. But this should buy you some time to get your expenses under control before unemployment runs out.