I see it's happened to a couple of people here. DH and I have jobs that seem to be secure, but what if? I want to form a plan on how to cope if one of us couldn't work.

If that happened, we could stop the automatic payments to savings and retirement funds, sell one of the cars, hmmm - not sure what else. Would it be better to use savings to pay off debt? Or hang on to savings for expenses?

This is a Question in itself.
I Know Alot Of people want to Get out of Debt and Use up any extra Money to Pay it Down.

I myself Feel Much Better with A Nicer Bank account and Some debt.
No Mathematically it Doesn't Make sense to Be Gaining 3 % on savings and Paying in 10 % on a Loan.
But somehow I would feel Better Knowing that if The Unexpected Happens , I Have 1000.00 in the Account and I Am Fine with Visa Making a 50.00 Monthly Payment.

Just my minds way of Looking at it.

been there done that.

first i say do both. start an emergency savings that truely is saved for this purpose only. I would also be paying off as much debt as possible.
I work 1 day a week to keep my job possibilies available. I was able to get a job within 1 month of my dh losing his job. here's a list of some of the things we did: no cable, no cell phones, basic service land line, no long distance, no newpaper delivery, no coffee shops, no car wash(at home car wash only), cut all eating out, meatless meals at least 3 days/week, grow a garden, no xmas exchange with adults, no dvd rentals, no buying books,dvd,etc that wasn't necessary for school, paid cash for everything, paid bills online.

I think the biggest problem for people is they think big, sell the car, instead of thinking of the nickles and dimes. you u did some of these thngs now you could really build up that emergency cash and pay off some debt.

also, I personally don't belive there is such a thing as a secure job unless you are the owner.

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allgirls, mom to 3 girls

It's Girl Scout Cookie Time

Well, we have no debt besides the house. I work part time (very part time) and that goes to extras like putting roof on the house and ds's preschool etc, but I can pick up more. We also have much more than 6 mo of living expenses saved up.

For me having no debt is a huge thing. I am anxious for when we can get our mortgage paid off. We paid off my 40K in school loans so that it wouldn't be hanging over heads.

So, I know that we would be ok.

i would rather have a nice big savings.
That's what i am doing, because i know my job will be closing down, they just haven't told us when. but we will get a severance pkg. which is good.
my debts are very minimal, and my payments super low, $83 on student loan and $160 on car payment.
if i have enough saved up, i can make those payments for at least 6 months plus rent with my savings.
if i pay both these debts off, and im out of work tomorrow.
i'll have no debt, but also, no $$ to pay rent, gas, food, utilities...for god knows how long...
i think a combination of saving while you pay down your debt as much as possible and saving as much as possible.

I also started: washing my own car,
bag lunch
rent movies 1.60 instead of going to movies with my son. (much cheaper)
cash envelopes only! no debit card.
drive slower, you wouldn't believe how much im saving in gas!!!!
contact companies for coupons (huge $$ saver) i only spend $30 week in groceries, that is for me and my son and for my bag lunches.

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Bestmommysaver!

I read a book awhile ago called Going Broke on Two Incomes, or something like that. One of it's ideas was the when families live to a level where they need, literally need, two incomes in order to survive (or at least a few steps above surviving), then they have no safety net when there is a job loss. Meaning, before women regularly worked full time, if the husband lost his job, the wife could go to work and make some money while the husband searched for a new job. Then, when he was working full time again, she would stop working full time.

That's a really long way of saying, one part of our plan is that I would go back to work fulltime (I'm part-time now) until my dh found another full time job.

Well, I have my emergency fund in case of job loss. That's about it. I live beneath my means so that I have savings to carry me through any situation like that. Fortunately I haven't been unemployed in a long time, but anything can happen.

My husband's job is secure in the fact that he is union and can transfer to another company. He has switched companies several times due to slow work at one place. There was a time last year that we had some really bad weather and he couldn't work due to that but he was able to collect unemployment which was only about half of his regular pay, but it was a huge help during those three weeks off. We are working on starting an emergency account though.

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Jenifer
Proud wife to one amazing man
Proud mom to four awesome kids

April showers bring May flowers
"Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your path straight." Proverbs 3:5-6

We have a plan in place for job loss. Unfortunately we have been through a couple of layoffs in the past. DH has a much more secure job now, though, so the threat of another layoff is slim.
The biggest thing that has saved us in the past has been having savings. Even if it hasn't been much, it has always gotten us through.
I'm not going to go fully into details, but here are a couple of steps that we'd take in an emergency:
1. We would use up everything that we currently have in our pantry before buying groceries. And when we do go to the grocery store, we would eliminate unneccesary items, such as pop, sugars, and convenience foods.
2. I could find a temp job. I worked in the dental field and I can always fill in for someone who is on vacation, maternity leave, etc. It pays well, and you can sign up for services who place you in a temp job on the days you choose.
3. We could start eliminating our unneccesary expenses, dining out and shopping would be the first to go, then we would eliminate as needed. We have a lot of flexibility in our budget, knowing that if we needed to we could eliminate quite a bit of our monthly obligations.
(BTW, I think that is the best way to survive a job loss, having the flexibility to be able to cancel things like cable, Netflicks, etc., because it means that every dime you have isn't being promised for yet another bill, and that if you needed it, you could simply cancel that bill or service. We try and keep our fixed expenses to a minimum for that reason.)
Other than house, cars and utilities, the rest of our budget is quite flexible.
There are lots of ways to survive a job loss, and most of them come down to just being creative.