Monthly Archives: June 2009

How To Survive Being Laid Off

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The following article contains condensed excerpts from $100K to Nothing – Layoff: My journey from a six figure income to the unemployment line in the worst economy of our time by Dan Holt. You can find out more about the book at www.100ktonothing.com.

Hi, I’m Dan and I’m unemployed. But it wasn’t always this way…I used to be employed, borderline overworked, and well compensated for my effort and effectiveness.

One pleasant spring afternoon, while enjoying lunch with my then 4 year old son, I received a phone call from my boss. I was not alarmed, because my boss resides on the West coast and I in Texas, so the 2 hour time difference often led to calls at odd hours. After taking a sip of water, I answered the phone and my boss paused before talking. A pause is never good. When bosses call, they speak their minds quickly so they can get on to other business. I was soon to find out how bad this pause was.

“Your position has been eliminated,” my boss said. Sure, there were some words before and after, but I don’t really remember them because these 5 words consumed my brain for the entire call-and for many weeks following. This was my first layoff, and although I am only 30 and the likelihood of another in the next 37 years is high, I hope it is my last.

After I calmed myself down, I thought about the best way to be laid off: the exit strategy that would be most beneficial to my future. I came up with these guidelines to help anyone else who faces a layoff, which seems to be everyone these days:

  1. Ask for an explanation, but don’t expect or demand one. If you are laid off, you deserve a reason from your boss, but you often will not get one. Accept that fact quickly. If you belabor the point, you run the risk of harming the relationship with the person who will be your best reference to future employers-and you stand to gain little more than a vague excuse.
  2. Maintain a professional image throughout the ordeal, only letting your guard down when you get home. The people you work with will also be references to give to future employers, and you need their last image of you to be as positive as possible. Crying and cursing as you’re escorted to the elevator would be a perfectly human response, but not a very strategic one.
  3. Finally, let it go. Don’t spend your time over-analyzing what happened. A job search is tough, and exponentially so in this recession. You have too much work to do to waste your time thinking about the work you won’t be doing anymore.

As I read these words now, months after my downsizing, they seem simple. But at the time, there was nothing harder to do than suppress my emotions as much as I could and follow these steps. If you face it, this will be hard, but it will be the most advantageous thing you can do.

After all, telling your interviewer that she cannot contact your former employer or colleagues is a huge red flag, and with 14.5 million other unemployed people competing for the limited number of job openings, a red flag can mean elimination from the pool of applicants without even a chance to explain it.

A New Perspective On Meeting Basic Needs

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Last week I mentioned that I was reading the book Scratch Beginnings: Me, $25, and the Search for the American Dream, by Adam Shepard. The book chronicles the real-life journey of Shepard, who upon finishing college turned over all his worldly possessions to his brother, and began a social experiment of his own. Armed with only $25 and a mostly empty gym bag, he hit the streets of Charleston, SC to try to make it out of poverty in one year or less.

scratchbeginnings062909

In the first 25 pages of the book you are instantly reminded of what it is like to have nothing but the clothes on your back. Actually, I shouldn’t say “reminded” because many of us have never experienced that feeling before. I’m not talking about being down and out for a few weeks, or struggling to make ends meet, I’m talking about having absolutely nothing. No car, no home, no job, no money, no food, no health care, and no network of friends to help. And from this Shepard was to rise to the ranks for the fully employed, find a place to live and sock away a respectable about of money in savings.

Besides an engaging look at what it’s really like to be homeless in America, Scratch Beginnings made me aware of a couple things that I had forgotten since becoming accustomed to a steady paycheck and having all of my basic needs met without giving it much thought. There are many people out there wondering where they will get their next meal, or their next job, or their next opportunity for work. This is especially true in this time of prolonged recession with many people finding themselves unemployed.

Shepard describes his first big win after a day of hard labor netted him $28.61. Combined with the whopping $20.27 he had left over from his $25 starter fund, this left him with $48.88 to start building a personal supply of basic items.

From the book:

Before heading to her home on the north side of town, Cicely dropped me off up the street from the EasyLabor at Family Dollar, where I made my money count. All of it. I bought six pairs of underwear, a six-pack of socks, six white undershirts, a stick of deodorant, a toothbrush, an eight-pack of Ivory soap, shampoo and conditioner, a towel, a washcloth, a roll of toilet paper for emergencies, and a week-long supply of an assortment of potted meat and crackers that I would eat for lunch.

It’s probably safe to assume this list doesn’t represent what most of our lists looked like from our most recent shopping trip. Notice there were no CDs, no bottles of expensive wines, no home decorating items, and no expensive toys. Nope, just basic necessities. Shepard was satisfying those needs for shelter, clothing and food first. Later, he would go on to add transportation, a job, and his own place to stay by sticking to his initial plan of only spending money on things that were absolutely necessary to his survival.

Most reading this are probably in much better situations than those described in the book living in the Crisis Ministries shelter in Charleston, SC. However, that doesn’t mean we cannot apply these same lessons. Intellectually, we all know that savings in merely a function of spending less than you earn. But many people are convinced a requirement for building savings is earning a lot of money. Not true.

In fact, I know plenty of examples of people who earn a ton of money and have very little, if any, savings. Conversely, I know people who earn a modest amount of money, but have healthy emergency funds and long-term savings. Scratch Beginnings really drove that point home for me, and from a frugal living perspective was the major take away from following Shepard’s story.

I would be remiss if I didn’t add a disclaimer for those interested in reading Shepard’s book. The language is raw and unedited from conversations he had with those in the shelter and at various jobs. It did not bother me, but it may not be suitable for young readers (pre-teen or younger). In a way I wish some of that had been left out of the book to expand the audience to younger people, but in the end I was glad Shepard left it in because it added to the authenticity of his experience. An experience that I hope more people will read and learn from in their struggle to lift themselves out of a life of poverty.

Marriage And Money: Do You And Your Spouse Differ On Finances?

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My wife and I have been married for over eleven years now. When we first married we were complete opposites on all things financial. I am, by nature, a saver. My wife is the free spirit, or the spender, in our relationship. In an effort to keep things civil those first few years I spent a little more than I was used to, and she sacrificed a little more than she was used to.

We were convinced our compromise of financial personalities was for the greater good of marital harmony.  However, over the years our natural tendencies were overridden by circumstances – circumstances we created for ourselves, but had to work through nonetheless.

Just a couple years into our marriage my wife quit working as we decided she would stay home with our children. It was a decision we made together, and reflected both of our desire for her to be home until the kids were school age. Neither of us downshifted our spending appropriately for living on one income, and soon we found ourselves in debt. Our growing debt had an interesting effect on our relationship. My wife became a saver, and I sobered up (financially) after a couple years of spending more freely than I was comfortable with.

These days we are both enjoying a more frugal lifestyle. Just the other day my wife went grocery shopping and picked up $273 worth of groceries and cleaning supplies for $186. For hardcore couponers out there that might not sound like a huge savings. But for us it is huge! We both resisted using coupons for years, dabbling with services like The Grocery Game and other coupon websites only half-heartedly.

The reason we weren’t gung ho was because we weren’t both enthusiastic about couponing. I would clip, she would forget. She’d clip and give to me for my after-work run by the store, and I’d forget to use them at the checkout. But when we both got on the same page we started realizing some serious savings.

This same synergy developed through shopping with coupons has carried over into other areas of our financial life. We both decided we were tired of being in debt and have been paying it off like crazy the last several months. We are now equally passionate about building our savings, our kids’ college savings plan and our own retirement.

How much do you and your significant other differ on finances? Has this changed since you first met?

Frugal Lawn Care: Sharpening Mower Blades

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This is a guest post from Kevin, who writes about how to get out of debt, stay out of debt, and build wealth at No Debt Plan.

When my wife and I purchased our first home a few years ago we needed a lawn mower for our small yard. I ended up buying an electric lawnmower that fit our needs.

Whether you use a traditional gas mower or an electric like me you will run into maintenance issues. With a traditional gas mower these include air filters, engine oil, topping off the gasoline, and mower blades.

Thankfully with an electric mower the maintenance issues are minimized. There is no oil. There is no gasoline. I need to look as I’m not sure if the thing even has an air filter (because there is no need for air to mix with gasoline in the engine).

However, we did run into one maintenance issue recently: mower blades. And that makes sense — all mowers have blades, right?

(Photo by somegeekintn)

Comparing Cost of Replacement Vs. Sharpening Mower Blades

Did you know you can have your lawn mower blades sharpened? A lawn mower blade is a piece of metal like a knife. Over time through continual use it becomes dull. Dull blades don’t cut grass as well as sharp blades. Cutting with a dull blade is also not great for your grass.

The cost of a new blade for my mower is $17 through Amazon. That’s not bad, and I actually plan to purchase a second blade. (More on that in a moment.)

I called around to a few lawn mower shops (Google: “lawn mower sharpen” and your city) and found a shop that would sharpen the blade for $8.

That’s an easy comparison: $17 for a new blade versus $8 for a “new” used blade. I could sharpen my current blade twice for every new blade I needed to buy.

Rotate Two Blades

As I mentioned above I plan to buy a second blade. At the end of the day having two blades makes life a lot easier than owning just one blade.

Take me, for example. I discovered my mower blade was quite dull the last time I mowed. I determined I needed it sharpened, but didn’t have a spare handy. This would seem like an easy fix: just go to the store and buy another blade, and get the original blade sharpened. Since I had purchased an electric mower online my properly sized replacement blades were only available online. (Just my luck.)

Having a second, sharp blade on hand makes life easy because you can take the old blade off and get it sharpened at your leisure. The new blade should last for quite a while giving you and I time to procrastinate on finding a sharpening shop while not sacrificing the quality of our mowing.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have this leisure and had to hurry to find a shop, get the blade off the mower, and have my wife take it down to the shop to get it sharpened. The sharpening took an hour and was back in our hands the same day.

Safety First When Changing Lawn Mower Blades

I can’t finish this article without clarifying some safety issues. As a general rule mowers are dangerous and have full capabilities to remove an unhealthy chunk of your body from you.

Safety first:

  • Disable your mower in as many ways as possible. With gasoline mowers make sure you disconnect the spark plug. With plug-in electric mowers make sure the mower is not plugged in. (For battery mower users, I can’t help you. No idea how they work.)
  • Blades are sharp. Be careful. Wear gloves or use a towel to hold the blade while you are loosening/tightening the socket that holds it in place. And make sure that when it comes loose that you haven’t been pushing too hard with your arm — you could push the blade into your hand as it comes loose.
  • Always use a proper sized and balanced blade. If your mower takes a 19″ blade, get a 19″ blade. If you get the blade sharpened make sure that it is still in balance. To do this just balance it on your finger or some other device to insure one side isn’t higher than the other — an unbalanced blade will shake the mower and generally isn’t a good thing to operate with.

You also have the option of sharpening the blades yourself with tool files. While I’m sure this is a relatively easy skill to learn I’d rather not deal with the hassle of doing it wrong or ending up with an unbalanced blade. The $8 spent is already a savings of $9 over the regular blade cost. That’s frugal enough for me.

Trust TruGreen for your lawn care, lawn maintenance and landscaping needs.

Weekly Roundup: Washing Machine Overdose

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Did you know it is possible to overdose your washing machine with detergent? Yeah, me neither. I guess I always understood on some level that overloading household appliances with cleaning solutions was bad, but Consumer Reports has provided actual proof, and apparently detergent makers aren’t much help.

A post at the Consumer report blog explains how poorly designed caps on laundry detergents can lead consumers to add too much detergent to their washing machine. Not only is this wasteful (and costly), it can lead to soap and lint build up inside machines. It can also cause some newer machines to work harder than necessary to remove extra soap suds.

Bottom line? Be sure to check for the fill line to properly measure your detergent.

The Fab Five

Should You Stay At Your Cushy Job. This article presents an interesting dilemma. Do you stay at a “cushy” job which doesn’t require much mental, physical and emotional energy (and overtime) or move on to one that does provide those things, along with more challenge? I agree that the only way I’d stay in such a job is to pursue a side hustle that could one day become my primary hustle! (@ My Wife Quit Her Job)

7 Secrets to Raising a Happy Child. Great ideas here on raising happy kids. And guess what you won’t find on the list? Spending a ton of money buying things for them. (@Zen Habits)

Breaking Bad Financial Habits – Impulse Purchases.  We are guilty of making impulse purchases, but I make a lot less than I used to.  There are a number of excellent strategies for fighting the urge to make impulse purchases, but I particularly liked the $100-a-day rule.  Read on to find out what it means. (@No Credit Needed)

30 Days of Disney.  A couple weekends ago I mentioned that we might be gearing up for a Disney vacation within the next year. I asked for tips and resources, and received tons of comments with excellent ways to make the vacation special without breaking our vacation fund. One of the best tips was to visit The Happy Housewife, who is in the middle of a “30 Days of Disney” series herself.  Excellent resource! (@The Happy Housewife)

Powerful Advantages of Renting a Home Before You Buy. Everything seems to go in cycles. A few years ago the idea of renting was met with laughter with sophisticated real estate types. Now, people generally recognize that renting isn’t so bad after all.  I agree with the author that it can be a great way to “test drive” a home before buying. (@Debt Free Adventure)

Frugal Finds

  • 99 Painless Ways to Save Money The Dough Roller just released this eBook to subscribers, and there are some real gems in there!
  • Dry Cleaner’s Secret. The folks at Woolite were nice enough to send us a few samples of Dry Cleaner’s Secret, a new alternative to traditional dry cleaning (something I hate because of the bill). I tried it on a number of dress shirts and was pleased with the results. Best of all; no bag required.

What’s On My Nightstand

I’m making an effort to get back into a reading routine, and have selected two books I’ve had on my wish list. I don’t know that I’ll create full-length book reviews when I’m finished reading, but I plan to mention them here, and I’ll probably incorporate stuff I read into a post or two each week.

You might have noticed the “Best of the Rest” feature is missing. I plan to include those in a separate post over the weekends to break up what was becoming a very crowded weekly roundup post. Look for those familiar favorites as part of my Sunday schedule.