Category Archives: Unemployed Average Joe

I’m a little nervous this morning. I have a phone interview later this morning with IDES (Illinois Department of Employment Security) for my unemployment benefits. Because of the way I was let go from my position, they have some questions. I was reading that this is all pretty standard but it still makes me nervous. The money would go a long way in helping to cover expenses so there’s quite a bit on the line here.

If I am able to receive unemployment I will have to go back to the Healthcare Marketplace and adjust my income which will likely qualify us for Marketplace insurance. For now, without unemployment we technically qualify for Medicaid which would be free. I’ll either be able to receive unemployment which will help with money, or free insurance which will also help. The unemployment will help more as it has a higher value than the free insurance. I’m crossing my fingers things go well and I can receive the unemployment benefits.

Joe-

Ending out week two of unemployment and some of the things I’ve learned so far:

– Illinois Department of Employment Security, not so bad to deal with. Online experience very good. Lots to complete, but simple enough process. *crossing my fingers benefits are approved*

– Sucks when this happens on the last day of the month. Our medical benefits literally stopped as of that day.

– Healthcare.Gov, similar experience as IDES, pretty good. Simple online process, quick and very user friendly IMO.

– Keeping to a routine is very important. It has made me feel pretty productive over the last two weeks.

– I can be awesome at meal planning when I want to be.

– Ebay, not so intimidating. Their app makes buying/selling straight forward. My Adventures In Ebay is going well with one sale already under my belt.

– It takes a while to get used to not being work-busy and the stress that goes along with it. I still find myself pacing the house with that caged animal feeling. I suspect this will go away as time goes on.

– You can regrow green onions over and over again by leaving the root in a glass with enough water to cover the roots. Doesn’t really pertain to unemployment, but still something I learned recently and I’m trying out. They’ve tripled in size since I started a couple on Monday!

– I don’t watch as much TV as I thought. I haven’t had the TV on once since I’ve been out of work. Not intentionally, no effort put into it, just haven’t had it on. Instead though…

– I have though been listening to music every day. I turn Pandora on in the morning and let it play all day. My top channels: Today’s Country, Rock Hits, 80’s, & Today’s Alternative.

– It’s good to take a hard look at your expenses and see where you can pull back. We have a few things we’re changing (Nicole or I will write about these soon). I wish we had done some of these earlier, wasting money is wasting money regardless of your situation.

Joe-

Well, it’s been a week since “the day”. It’s been a busy week, applying for unemployment, checking into healthcare and just coming to terms with *not* having a busy work schedule.

Looks like we are covered for the month with regards to money coming in. I have a final check that came in last week and my vacation payout will be in a couple weeks, that will be for a month worth of vacation. So the final paychecks will definitely help out.

I’m pretty proud of us for slamming on the brakes when it comes to spending money and cutting back on expenses. We jumped in with both feet. We can’t say for sure how long I’ll be out of work, so let’s get down to it. I’m looking forward to comparing the MoM (month over month) expenses to see where we saved. Currently, under evaluation for reduced expenses – cable tv and our mobile phone carrier. The current “deal” we receive from Comcast is up in a month or so. We’re going to wait that out and then drop everything but internet. Let’s face it, when you see the streaming options out there, there really is no need for overpriced cable tv. More to come on that with my Cutting The Cord entry I’ll be posting in a few weeks. For our mobile carrier (AT&T), it’s kind of the same deal as cable. After seeing the other options out there, we should have looked to move a while ago. We’ll post an entry on cell phones in the upcoming weeks as well. We’re considering going to Ting Wireless. Nicole has already gone through the comparison, and we will literally be cutting our bill in half.

So I started my EBay adventure over the weekend. I posted a few items and we’ll see how it goes. I already have a bid on the higher priced of the three, so that’s a good start! Today at home, I’m starting to go through room-by-room and collect items for the garage sale. We’ll see how that looks at the end of the day. I also have a new recipe for dinner I’m trying – Cajun shrimp Alfredo. I’ll post a pic to my Unemployed_Average_Joe Instagram account. Click below to follow me. : )

Joe-

Now that it’s been a week since the unthinkable happened – Joe abruptly losing his job – I thought I’d talk about my reaction.

Just as there are different stages of grief, one goes through stages when suddenly their household income drops below their expenses.

Shock

It felt like a dream, or specifically more like a nightmare, made more so by the fact that I was literally asleep when Joe called to say he had been let go and was coming home. It took me a minute to process what was happening. How could this be? He worked so hard and for so many hours (including a 20-hour day not too long ago). He did his best, and yet that wasn’t good enough? Why was this happening?

We have been through possible layoffs before but we always had several months notice and there was a promised severance package in place. Not this time. One day employed, the next day not. It was difficult to wrap my head around what this would mean for us.

Fear

Uncertainty often leads to fear, or in my case panic, and I hit that stage quickly. How were we going to pay the bills on my salary alone? How long would we be in this position? What will be the long-term ramifications of this one decision, over which we had no say?

We had been saving aggressively for retirement for years and all I could think about is how this could ruin everything. If I could see into the future and know how long we’d be in this situation at least I’d have an end goal in mind, but having no idea was giving me heart palpitations. On top of that concern, was that his next job could pay less which means we wouldn’t be able to go back to fully funding our retirement accounts. If you thought my anxiety disorder was bad when we were living debt-free, imagine how much it instantly skyrocketed with this news. The fear of the unknown is a powerful thing – this one change in circumstances could completely derail our entire future.

Depression

These thoughts led to a feeling of powerlessness. I barely slept on Monday evening because so many thoughts were swirling around my head. I felt like in one fell swoop some uncaring person/entity had ruined our lives without so much as a thought. I mused why people bother working hard at their job at all if this could be the end result.

Anger

By the next day I was angry. It especially angered me that he was let go the last day of the month giving us no time to schedule any preventative doctor visits before our insurance was cancelled. Had this happened just one day later – March 1st – we would have had until the end of the month. Instead everything was cancelled the same day we received the news. Therefore, while we shop around we are uninsured which is both scary and infuriating; the price of Cobra is ridiculous.

In addition, while looking into our other options I started to feel resentful that we’ve paid into all these systems via our tax dollars but do not qualify for them due to the money we have saved over the fifteen years we’ve been together. It felt like we were being penalized for being financially responsible. Had we lived at or beyond our means we would easily qualify for food stamps and free healthcare, but now we’d have to burn through all our savings first. You must be destitute to reap any benefit from the very programs you’ve paid into your entire working life.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m incredibly grateful that we aren’t destitute; it just seems a bit unfair to work so hard and be denied help when you need it.

Acceptance

By mid-week I was done feeling sorry for myself and wasting my energy feeling angry. None of those things are going to help us forage this new path, so I felt it best to focus on the positive. At that moment the term blessing in disguise came to mind. Joe was very unhappy at his job, and extremely stressed out which is unhealthy in so many ways, so perhaps this was all for the best. We would have never chosen this particular path, but it wasn’t up to us. I was determined to start focusing on the things under our control, like reducing our monthly expenses (which I’ll get into more specifically in another entry).

So that’s where I’m at today – trying to maintain positivity in a difficult situation.
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I’d love to hear from people who have been in our situation before. How did it make you feel and how did you handle it? Do you have any words of wisdom? Please share in the comments below.

Ah Sundays.

Something about Sundays that makes me want to do absolutely nothing all day but eat, drink and relax. For some reason I enjoy turning on the Palladia channel (MTV Live now) and listening to the concerts they run on the weekends all day long. It’s also the one day I like to enjoy a good Bloody Mary. Not one of those premix ones. Those are decent, but I make mine entirely from scratch, and they come out pretty damn good. I’ll be enjoying one of those in an hour or so.

So for the upcoming week I’ve already started my meal planning. And more complicated recipes this week too. Pinterest makes looking for recipes too easy! I already have a host of different recipes via Nicole. She’s a damn good cook with an arsenal of recipes. I’ll be using some of hers, and taking the opportunity to try a few more. More on those as the week goes on. With our new found budget we’ve been tossed into, over the next couple months I’m hoping to get through much of the items we’ve been storing in the freezer but just haven’t used yet. It’s a good time to use what we have to save some $$.

I’m off to get another cup of coffee and jot down some blog post ideas for the week. Enjoy your Sunday!

Joe-

I dropped the “Day x” from my blog titles. I was already getting tired of seeing them in the post titles and figured this unemployment thing is going to go on for a while and that will serve as a reminder how long it’s been.

Anyway, it’s Friday! Normally, well I can’t even say “normally” any more since my “normal” schedule is what it is today now that I’m out of work and not say, last week now when I wasn’t. How about this, prior to this week I would be pretty damn happy to see Friday come around. While I would still work over the weekend getting caught up on emails and working on some spreadsheets, it was still a little less work for the weekend to be here. It’s not that I’m not happy to see Friday, but at this point it’s kind of like all the other days.

Today is errand day. Nicole is off on Fridays and we have a host of things to do. We’re kind of looking at my unemployment as a challenge to cut back and save where we can right out of the gate. So the errands we run today, we’re primarily buying items we need that are on sale or that we can get a deal on. Coupons straight from Target.com or Walmart.com help. Plus, at Target we use their Cartwheel app which almost always gives an additional discount on their store brand (Market Pantry) items. Along with the 5% off we get for the Target Red Card, it all adds up, trust me. It will be interesting to see in a month or two how good/bad we were able to curb our overall spending. I’ll have to go through that exercise next month and see how March turned out, expense-wise. I will need to do things like that to make sure my Excel skills stay sharp. ; )

It’s pretty helpful Nicole is as organized as she is, I’m still a work in progress with being organized. An example of her organizational skills…while I’m writing this entry, we’re going through an inventory of supplies we have in the house and I’m updating her Evernote list. She tracks our supply of everything in the house; personal care items, cleaners, and even food. We also found the shopping list app she uses can share lists so we can keep one main list between us.

A quick plug for Free Stuff Finder . The site is updated often and the deals on there can be really good.

Joe-