I am so sorry for your Job Loss.
For years every time my husband got a promotion he would say to me, we're getting by just fine on this amount, why don't we just keep living like this, then when something comes up... So we did and when we wanted a bigger house we bought it but still kept living like we were in the little house, only buying one new car every 10 years etc, not splurging on brand names if it wasn't necessary (we had to on laundry detergent, very sensitive skin and no good no names for that at the time). Not hitting the movies or dinners out constantly. Next promotion the same thing etc.
We'd pay extra on the mortgage whenever we could, and every tax return, instead of going on a trip or something we'd pay off all the credit cards. Then my husband got MS. I'd been ill for years, but I was never the bread winner. This was scary. The company moved us again and we had to build a new house with an uncertain future in mind. We did what we'd always done, only this time we built our house thinking...can we pay for it living on disability, if we lose his job....have to pay for medical insurance etc. It served us very well.
A year and a half ago he had to retire. He is now on disability and we are in our new house. We're still figuring out the finances but we're used to not going out to eat, to using the cheap toilet paper etc. I hope that we are never in a situation where we have to learn to live without even those basics. Our income is now fixed, it won't grow except for what we manage to put away and invest. The future is scary.
We were forced into this move by the economy. His company started laying off and revoking benefits. We were so scared that they would revoke his disability benefits. He was struggling so hard to make it into work every day and when they started to cut all bonuses and raises we knew he had to leave then or face the fact that the disability insurance would go next.
Laney
