Manage your money during a job search
One of the greatest challenges during any job search is the management of your finances. No longer can you count on that next check to tie up loose ends. Instead, you have to focus closely on any money flowing in and out of your bank account. Don’t worry! You can survive if you stay focused on managing your money. To help, here are a few things you may not have thought of:
Unemployment: If you aren’t on it already, file for unemployment quickly. You have been paying this bill directly throughout your career. It is your money, you should use it.
Expenses Inventory / Portfolio: Find out where your bills stand. List everything and prioritize each expense or bill based on importance & priority.
Revenue Inventory: Find any and all money that is coming in to you. This could include the income of your spouse, interest on an investment, or even a severance package.
Assets/Equity Inventory: List what you own and how much it is worth. I’m not suggesting you should sell the dodge, but find out what could be sold in case of an emergency. This includes equity in your house, savings, 401k, insurance policies, etc…
Find the gap: Find the gap between income and outgoing cash flow. This gap is what will make the difference between comfortable survival and absolute despair.
Fill the gap: Once you understand your gap, build a plan for filling it. Start by identifying short term sources of new income and begin the application process.
Narrow the gap: If the short term revenue doesn’t comfortably fill the gap, look to reducing the flow of outgoing expenses, narrowing the gap. There are many ways to do this. Slow your consumption of non-necessary items, cut back on the cable or phone bills, etc.. Re-negotiate your debt, talk with the mortgage, automobile and credit card lenders. Ask each for an extended payment model. Start early and ask monthly and you may just get an excellent deal on repaying your debt.
Avoid the bottomless gap: When nothing else works, use your priority list to protect what is most dear. Pay your important bills first, limit payments to less important expenses to preserve cash flow. Just be careful of creating a bottomless gap of catching up late payments whenever possible.
Start early and stay focused on the gaps in your budget and you should comfortably get through your job search, even if savings are limited. With luck you can avoid the foreclosure trap seen throughout the country during this recession.
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