Dh joins the ranks of the unemployed

[lisettelovebug]

Last night dh pulled into the driveway at 11pm (he doesn't get out of work until 7am). I knew something wasn't right. He unlocks the door and comes in bringing beer. Yep, something's wrong. Ends up that he and 34 other guys got laid off. The company really didn't want to do it, but they have had so many companies cancel orders recently that they had to. They are letting them finish this pay week plus are paying them their vacation pay that they haven't used yet. They think that business will pick up, but it's going to be a couple months. I guess they brought back those people who had taken the voluntary layoff and will see if they still want to take it (the ones that have seniority). He is 11 in line to come back. The worst part was that we were going to have our preconstruction meeting for our house this week and closing by the end of the month. Dh will call RD on Monday and see what needs to be done now - hopefully they can just put it on hold. Thank goodness I did do up an unemployment budget a while ago. So, I think we will be ok.

So this is the plan. Since it might take a while for dh to find a job that pays similarly, he is going to get his unemployment for a while (of course he will be looking, but we don't have a lot of faith that he will find something). We will be getting about $5000 from taxes back so we will pay off a couple of our smaller credit cards and the rest will be put in savings. We have about $700 in our savings also. I will finish up my classes this semester and when they are done in May we will see if he's back to work or not. If not, I will try to find something making $3-400 a week. When I was searching jobs last night I did find quite a few that I would have a chance of getting and some that would be a long shot. So, dh will become a stay-at-home dad for a while. I have 2 months to train him. LOL. He will be getting the full amount for New York state unemployment - which I believe is now $430 since Obama passed the stimulus package. I'm not sure if he got unemployment extended …?

Monday morning I will be calling to have our cable dropped down to 2-13. This will cost us about $40 but will result in us only paying about $10 a month for it. We need to keep the internet because of my classes. We will probably end up getting rid of our cell phones and getting track phones. We will be getting some type of prepaid phones this week and canceling our cell phones. This will save us at least $40 a month. And we can transfer our old numbers. We have medical until the end of the month and then we will get the kids on new york state health plus.

So, I think we will be ok. When I was looking at our extended budget, we will only need to use $50 of our savings this month to cover expenses and none in April because there is 5 weeks. On the other hand, May will be a tough month because ds's bday is in early June and we have the water bill due at the end of the month. So I have it figured that we will need to transfer about $200 that month. Actually I don't think it's too awful bad considering all things. I am hoping they will being him back quickly. I will be crossing my fingers...

Lisette
http://couponqueenofcorning.today.com

[lisettelovebug]

Ok. I need some advice. As you can see above dh just got laid off. We are getting back about $5000 tax refund. Of this we have to pay a little over $400 for the class dh is taking. We also have to have new tires put on (we've been looking at sam's - they have some good prices), I do not know if dh will have all changed or just the front ones. We also need to have an inspection and hopefully nothing else will need to be fixed in order for it to pass. So, let's say that will be $500 or less. We were supposed to pay dh's uncle back $1200 he lent us to pay the lawyer and fees when we got our land, but I think that will have to wait for now.

So we will have about $4000 left. Should we pay off some of our credit cards or just keep paying monthly? There is a few that I would really like to pay off: one of my capital one cards has $80 on it, best buy has less than $300, and dh's laptop has about $600 on it with interest at 19.9%(yikes). This would reduce our payments each month by $65 each month... we normally pay $205 although our actual minimums are somewhat less... We would also be saving on interest of course.

This would leave us with about $3000 to put in our savings and help us ride out this unemployment. What do you all think?

Lisette
http://couponqueenofcorning.today.com/