With our economy in recession, more people will be losing their jobs, and could be finding themselves without one for an extended period. When that happens it's not good enough to just cut back spending a little and use credit cards to make ends meet until the economy recovers.
Getting by without a job is possible, even for an extended period, but it requires taking drastic measures to cut spending, and it requires taking them early, while you've still got some cash on hand.
Cutting fixed expenses
Most of the fixed costs for a household are tied up with housing. There's the rent or mortgage, there's the utilities, and there's the insurance. If you own a house free and clear with no mortgage (or if the payments are very low), then it may make sense to stay there (even though just utilities and insurance can add up to as much as the cost of a cheap apartment). If you're renting or have a mortgage, you need to look seriously at moving to the lowest-cost housing you can find--and start looking the instant you begin to suspect that this period of unemployment will not be the sort of brief sojourn that people can generally expect during good economic times.
The most obvious thing to do is to move in with relatives. Many people view this as the sort of ignominious defeat that's little better than ending up living in their car, but it's a step that can turn a catastrophe into just a bump in the road if you do it early enough. If you wait until your savings are exhausted and you've run up a bunch of credit card debt, you can put yourself into a hole that you may not be able to get out of anytime soon. Just tell yourself that you're not moving in with relatives forever, just until the economy improves enough that you can find steady work again. And really, isn’t this what family is for – to support us and always be there for us in our time of need no matter what? Of course it is.
If you don't have relatives (or they won't take you in), other sorts of house-sharing arrangements are possible, such as splitting costs with a roommate or renting a room in someone else's house. The other really large expense for a lot of people is transportation. Owning a car costs thousands of dollars a year--and only about half the expense is the purchase price and financing; the rest is just fuel, maintenance, taxes, and so on. If your car is paid off, it may make sense to keep it; it would put some opportunities to earn money within reach that wouldn't be if you had to rely on public transport or a bicycle or walking. But owing money on a car is just about untenable for someone without a job.
Those are the big ones. If you can reduce your cost of housing enough (and you don't have other debt that you have to make payments on), you can cover your other living expenses at some level, even with a very low income, at least temporarily.
Enjoy it
Is there any overlap between living in poverty and living large? Personally, I think there is. Being forced by hard economic times to eke out a meager existence - that's not exactly living large. But choosing to eke out a meager existence, because it's the best way to live according to your own values? That's living about as large as you possibly can. Most people never think about what they most want to do with their lives. They find something that they're okay at that pays enough money to support them, and then let a rising income drive a rising standard of living with no real thought even to the possibility that there might be alternatives. In hard times, though, the alternatives may be all you've got. Fortunately, there's a good chance that one of those alternatives is actually a better choice than whatever you ended up doing.
You can get by without a job if you cut your spending enough. And if you do that, you open up a universe of possibilities that most people don't even know is out there. Take advantage of the opportunity to explore those previously uncontemplated choices. If you don't like what you find, you can go back to working a regular job just as soon as you find one. Maybe, though, you'll find the alternatives alluring.
And if you're unemployed and haven't already done so, by all means - file for unemployment.
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