Survive unemployment by saving money ahead of time to tide you over until you find new employment. One of the best ways to survive unemployment is to have 3 -6 months of living expenses put away. That’s a lot easier than it sounds but it can be done. Saving 3-6 months of living expenses sounds like a lot of money, and it is but America’s economic problems have shown that this may not be nearly enough. From 2008 to the time of this writing in 2011, many people became unemployed and many of them lost their homes through foreclosure. You can temper or avoid this kind of financial strain and survive unemployment by saving money before employment.
Historically Americans have been poor savers and have carried heavy debt making it hard to survive unemployment. The economic depression mentioned above, helped Americans to see a need to dump credit card debt. Consumers had begun to payoff and cancel credit cards in an effort to get their finances in order before the American economic crisis. The collapse of the housing market, due to predatory lending, put American homeowners that didn’t have any savings at financial risk.
So how do you start saving to survive unemployment when you’re already stretching every penny? The good news is there are several things you can do to come up with extra money to put in an emergency savings fund. The bad news is all of these things require you to make sacrifices. These sacrifices are changes in attitude and lifestyle. Our attitude towards money is what causes us financial problems or blessings. A healthy attitude toward money leads to a healthy financial situation and a bad attitude toward money brings trouble.
Here are some attitude adjustments to help you get started saving.
Get a part time job – Pizza delivery, house sitting, blogging
Pack your lunch
Downsize your dwelling
Sell any unneeded items – Ebay, Craigslist, Iwanna
Downsize your vehicles
Pay off the smallest balances on debts and add that payment to the next smallest debt to pay off all debt.
Get the smallest cable package or none at all
Cut back or quit smoking
Cut back or quit drinking alcohol
Cut back or quit drinking sodas
Cut back or quit snacking
Buy store brands at the grocery
Use Coupons/Groupons when shopping
Carpool to work
A carpool for the kids to school
Trade services or products – Just ask
Here’s an unemployment survival challenge. Use the list above to estimate how much money you could make or save by following the suggestions in the list. Just put a figure out beside an item and then total them up. How much did you come up with? That’s money for an emergency saving fund to help you survive unemployment. Can you think of any other ways to survive unemployment by saving money before unemployment catches up to you?
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