What if . . .

[Shell]

Let's play a frugal game. What if something happened and you and dh lost your income for a while. Hmmm let's say 6 months. What is your survival plan? How long could you live off your pantry? What would you cut back on? Do you have some money put a side for rent/mortgage? Just curious, how everyone would handle something like this. Perhaps, some of you already had too.

I know I was off work for a year once. It was hard. I am trying to have a lot better game plan in case something like this ever happens again.

[Mom23boys]

Shell~ I was worried about you. Glad you are here. I thought you might have already had the baby.


The answer to the ? for me is:
*we could live off our pantry for 2 months
*we could pay rent for 3 months
*I would cut out the extra phone line, directv, the internet if I had too, 1 vehicle, raise my insurance deductible from $200 to $500 to cut the yearly cost, eatting out and some entertainment.

[heaven]

well i don't know how much more i could cut back phone and comp. would go
I am on a really tight budget now. i don't want to cut anymore.

[Shell]

Ahhhh you were worried? How sweet. No, I am still here and still pregnant. I am a couple of days past due and still no contractions yet.

[Mom23boys]

I just knew when I hadn't seen you around Shell that you must have went into labor and delivered that baby boy or baby girl. Maybe it won't be much longer and those contractions will start.

[captclearance]

I purchased debt protection insurance, it will pay almost all of my bills off if I were to lose my job or become disabled ........... I have a good sized pantry .....

[justjenn]

Well, since we have no savings, we would really be hurting! We are just now trying to get our heads a above water, so that we can start an emergency fund. So, we lost the game before we started. lol

[SewCrafty]

Well, dh retired on Jan 3rd. I knew we wouldn't have a paycheck until at least March (still don't yet!) so we have been living off our pantry and just cutting back in general. If it were to be longer, I would cut out everything, phone, internet, dish etc. Our deductibles are pretty high on our car insurance already, but with gas prices we would go down to one car.

[halo475]

Unfortunately I have had experience in this too I have been in survival mode since November. What I did was stop buying anything and everything that did not directly relate to keeping food/heat/electricity in the house and keeping the roof over our heads.

I was already living at a minimum ie no extra's on my phone etc. The only things left i had to cut was to cut off the cable tv, but its only 12.50 per month. I was prepared, and I prepared my dks for that to go if things got worse. I would also be forced to cut the second phone line and ISP. My only problem is which one to cut first. If we are in survival mode, that means no outings, so the cable at 12.50 per month is really a good value, and the ISP and second phone line are my lifelines to all of you We have yet to get to that point, where I had to make those choices.

But I have a period of unemplyment coming up in May, where I will have no income at all, so right now I am banking everything to get us through that.

I have started slacking on that though and buying things that are not necessary and need to get back on track with that. May is not really that far away!!

My pantry has held up really well. I did learn that I have no where near enough canned/frozen fruits and vegtables. We ran out of those fast, and for about a month we had few or none fruits and vegies.

I also learned that, as much as my dks assured me they would, they won't DIE without store bought bread. LOL

But we had meat, bought by the half in the fall, before income drop and 2 bushels of potatoes that my df bought for us in the fall, and all the homemade breadstuffs.

As far as paying rent and elec bill and heat bill I could survive about 4 months at this point, by using my FA and EF.

I have not had to touch my EF yet and my Freedom account is working as it should.

The income drop has caused me to look long and hard at the differences in wants and needs, and the differences between those 2 are clearer than ever before in my life.

[AmyBoz]

Dh and I are sitting here trying to work out the numbers. Here's what we've come up with:

If we sold dh's stocks and combined it with our savings, we could pay our mortgage/car/misc. necessary bills for 6 months
We could live off of our stockpile if we only bought bread/milk/produce each week for probably 6 months.
We would get rid of our cell phones, which are for emergencies only, so we really are paying the minimum each month, but it's $
We really don't charge anything except for groceries, so we wouldn't have to cut back spending except for our ocassional pizzas on Friday nights.

[Jerseygirl]

We currently have 2 1/2 years of my salary in the bank-emergency and remodeling $-which we could live off of. My pantry would probably only keep us for 2 months. Our only real expense is the morgage, utilities, insurances (which are ok) and cell phones oh and his alimony and child support-which would be the first things to be lowered.

[katiebug]

We went through this last year for 7 months. We did OK on unemployment benefits for the first 3 months, but then things changed and we had no income for 4 months. We had already cut back pretty far over the past couple of years as we have pursued a more frugal lifestyle, and the only debt we have is our mortgage. When DH lost his job, he got some vacation pay, and I stretched that until is snapped back at me. We didn't have to dip into savings until the very end, and that was only about $2000 to get us through until the first paycheck of the new job arrived.

We managed by shopping only loss leaders for groceries and not wasting any food....leftovers were frozen and then we had freezer potluck meals every couple of weeks. We only participated in free entertainment...library books and videos and free town events. I cut out all long distance phone calls (but then my sister missed me so she gave me a pre-paid calling card). We never got to the point of having to do this, but things we would have cut out if DH's period of unemployment had continued are:
-cell phones (at least his, I would keep mine for emergencies)
-trash pick up (we could take it to the dump ourselves for less)
-cable internet access ( we could go back to cheaper dial up service)