Advice and Love to My Friends Who Have Lost Jobs

Making pizza at home

A loss of a job is more than that one thing. We equate our worth with our work. We sometimes establish how valuable we are by our titles and things we can buy. A loss of a job, whether for a few months or a couple of years, requires change. That change is best done with others who know you and can help you. Folks from your financial advisor, to family members, to co-workers, to therapists are here to help. My job loss required a lot of change. One big one was the need to reduce our monthly expenses by two-thirds. Here's how we did that one, difficult thing.

Big changes:

1. Cut our housing expense by 50%.

2. Reduce three vehicles to one vehicle, no car payment, and use public transportation more often to reduce gas and parking expenses.

3. Cut car insurance by 60%.

Small changes:

1. Eat out less, reduce food & dining budget by 20%, we even started making pizza at home.

2. Reduce entertainment; we cancelled nearly all of our streaming services and took advantage of the couple of free subscriptions we got with our internet service. We couch tour concerts, and I do virtual walks through museums.

3. Use the library, that has always been a big part of my life, but now I use all of the services, including trading my Audible subscription for their audio renting system called Libby.

4. Use our neighborhood free library to take a book and leave a book.

5. I kept Spotify for music and podcasts, I have a lot of saved playlists for family and events, and appreciate being exposed to new music with some adjustments to the algorithm.

New goals:

I had severance, unemployment, and some emergency savings. We don't use savings unless it's absolutely urgent now. We do everything we can to anticipate changes in our part-time employment and self-employment before we depend on savings, so we're not taking away from our future selves. 

Because we had tracked our expenses for years, first in Mint and then in YNAB, we could assess, with much data, how to bridge the gap between our new income and our living expenses. Our values around money hadn't changed. We prioritized our security, then help for family, then experiences. What had changed dramatically was the "how much".

New realities:

We're currently not saving for our future. That part is hard; we know it's not permanent, but it's the reality. 

I miss a lot about my old budget. I loved my car, I love having cocktails and fancy dinners out, and I love planning trips. Moving from 4000+ square feet and 10 acres to 1000 square feet and 1/4 acre is a big transition. We prioritized what we care about, green space, and accepted the other changes that we didn't love, like sharing a bathroom. I miss many things, but I love our ability to have "enough" without financial stress more.

The saying from James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, "You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems," was so relevant for this big life change. We had a system in place for understanding how we earned, spent, and saved. That was the mechanics. But the culture change needed came from my husband. He pressed me to reassess what "enough" means. 

I keep earning, the small stuff adds up. I have delivered packages for UPS during the holiday, drove for Lyft, and was a concession lead at Providence Park for Timbers and Thorns game. There is joy to be had in building different kinds of community in new places. It's good for the pocket book and the soul.

I spent nearly a year looking for another full-time job. Large organizations had employed me for the previous 11 years, but 565 job applications later, I finally accepted that it wasn't going to be my path.

Now, as I get exceptional advice and guidance from people I admire, as I go back to consulting (something I did for 14 years early in my career), I'm planning for my business with more help and insight from people who are doing well what I want to do. Writing my second book has become a joy rather than a thing I need to do on the weekends. 

I have many friends and acquaintances who have recently lost their jobs. These are difficult times, but they're also an opportunity to reassess our values around money and how we spend that resource, as well as how we spend our most important resource, time. 

I treasure the truth that I have more control over my time. Fifty-six meetings a week, no thank you. Not enough time to get the movement and meditation you need to be a whole human? Not my problem now. Raise your hand if you've ever needed a bio-break between meetings and didn't have time, so you put your Zoom or Teams meeting on mute, no video, and prayed no one called on you. The struggle was real. You'll have new struggles, but maybe ones that you'll ultimately love.

This hard time will be hard. But it will also wake you up to some of the things you've missed. Lean in, find yourself again, strive to be your whole fabulous you, and maybe make a list of things to do in between jobs like I did here. 

I'm grateful for how you've helped me during a difficut time, hope you know, I'm here for yours. You got this.