I am really lucky that husband's job has been steady and solid and well-paying and that he is good at what he does, so we have never yet been homeless or hungry. We did have to accept money from my awesome sister a few times when things came up, car repairs or money for gas to go home for a funeral.
I looked on my resume, yep, I last had any job on November 29, 2006.
I am unemployed over 5 years now.
I have my Associate of Applied Science Degree in Computer Aided Drafting Technology, from ITT Tech in Boise, Idaho, (using the AutoCAD software) 18 months and thousands of dollars of debt, to learn my chosen field, graduated back in 1992. I have several years of experience doing that work, too, at more than 7 companies, using my skills for everything from layouts for biodiesel and ethanol plants to convenience stores to the glass windows of highrise skyscrapers in two cities; I have drawn up the plans for several municipal wastewater treatment plants in Poland and the USA, and I had a few months drawing at a firm that built huge metal holding tanks for oil refineries and for Kraft cheese sauce. So I have the degree, I have the experience. Yet I couldn't find a job!
I did look for work for three years before I gave up. I don't get any Unemployment money (it ran out years back) I don't get Social Security, nor Disability, not even Food Stamps. And we get by on his single paycheck. Thank goodness we don't have kids!
So here we are, 20 years after Ron and I graduated from ITT Tech, and we are still paying on our student loans!! I cannot get a job in my field, and Ron's current job has nothing to do with what he went to school for. Its ironic.
I look at the Help Wanted ads now, on occasion, just curious, sometimes I will see one ad, or two, for my skills and training, and I know there will be 90+ people who send in their resume for that position, and I know that there will be 30 people spending time and gas to go and sit down and do their best to convince the employer that they are the one best fit for that single available position.
Job hunting is expensive, too. Especially with just one car. Gas and added miles on the car, drycleaning costs on interview clothing, buying interview clothing and shoes, resume copies, haircuts, makeup....it adds up. No more for me, its too expensive.
Nope, I stay unemployed so I don't have to afford a work wardrobe, a second car with its own insurance/maintenance/fuel costs, haircuts, makeup, work shoes, special lunches that can be microwaved and won't stink up the office and your breath, its all just so complicated and expensive! Its expensive to have a job!!
Back in the 90's, there were always dozens of job ads for drafters like me, it was a better time. Then, late 90's, companies got a new idea: they would make their company look better to their investors/stockholders by laying off a percentage of their workforce and making the remainder work harder. It was called downsizing. They didn't quite grasp that that percentage they laid off would mean that, since everyone was doing it, that in short order, there were large amounts of people unemployed, people who therefore could not afford to purchase the items/services those very companies created or provided. Downsizing actually damages the sales numbers for companies a little down the road. So now, the hot trend isn't downsizing, its Job Creation. Ironic, isn't it?
We did have a house we were buying, way back when, we were there for 12 years before we sold it barely in time before we got foreclosed on. When was that, 2005 or 2006, somewhere in there. Stressful times. We sold our beloved house even though we didn't want to, barely covering what we owed on it, and moved to an apartment we found that would accept our large German Shepherd so at least we wouldn't have to give her up. I have firsthand advice that if you ever need lawn or gardening tools, check Craigslist, those who have to suddenly move from foreclosed house to apartment are eager to sell such items.
When we were packing, I sent Ron to Sam's Club, to buy a box of industrial size heavy duty trash bags, we packed clothes, blankets, towels in them, and lots of other unbreakable things like the empty tupperware, lots of our office supplies, lots of the bathroom items went into their own trashbag. Gallon ziplocs to keep the small stuff together in the larger bags. And glass items I wrapped in the industrial version of Saranwrap that restaurants use, also from Sam's, it provided just enough buffer to keep glass from breaking just from hitting glass in the same box, so we didnt have to buy packing material. And we considered buying a van from Craigslist to move with, then just sell it again after the move, but we didn't. We found a couple guys with a truck instead, for the big stuff.
It was a great help that when we moved, I was unemployed. I didn't have to worry about job, I could just pack stuff, for weeks ahead, and months after the move, I had the time to both unpack and sleep a full 8 hours each night. Moving is stressful and painful.
Now, for us, life is ok. We have one car we bought new back in 2002, a gas saving Prius hybrid. We keep it properly maintenanced so its still going strong, a decade old but paid off. And just in case, when we found this place, our rental place, I made sure it was in walking distance of bus service, so if the car doesn't start, Ron can still get to his job. No risking losing his job, its the only thing keeping us afloat.
We live a small but comfortable life. No second car, so I am stuck home every day unless I take the bus. No Winter Solstice gifts for us, no birthday gifts either. No house decorating, most of our furniture came from Ikea or used, from Craigslist. And no credit cards at all. We got out from under credit cards over a decade ago. Its hard, living paycheck to paycheck with no credit cards to fall back on, but in the long run, it costs us a lot less money...well at first it didn't. Because we didn't have credit cards, at first we got a lot of fees every month for Insufficient Funds !! It was horrible!! It really helped a lot when we switched our banking to Ing Direct, because that has NO OVERDRAFT FEES at all, so when we do go over our balance, its ok, because our account has anOverdraft Line of Credit. It means instead of a flat fee, the little bit we go over, they charge us a tiny percentage instead. Last month that amount they charged us was $2.80. Much better than $30 x 5 or more, every month. I recommend it highly.
No eating out other than Mcdonalds or BK or Taco Bell, and that not often. For our 19th wedding anniversary, we splurged and went to a real sit-down restaurant: Denny's! And for Valentine's Day, well, we do celebrate that, but see, we make it affordable. Every year he goes to Godiva and buys us an assorted box of dark chocolates from Godiva, one of the special Valentine ones....on the DAY AFTER Valentine's Day. So its half off its original price, that way. :)
We have bills like everyone else, I finally convinced Ron that we would be better off without cable-tv of any sort. We kept the Netflix (we haven't been to a movie theater in 5 years) and we kept just enough cable, Comcast's $8.95 Basic cable to let us see the local channels without investing in one of those digital transition boxes, since all TV waves are now digital. Rabbit ears aren't enough any more. The $8.95 a month for Basic gets us 17 channels of content, including the Weather Channel, two shopping channels, and the handful of wonderful local PBS channels, as well as your standard NBC CBS ABS Fox as well as WGN and CW.
We had had Comcast for internet and landline phone and $80 worth of cable a month, we looked over the options and cut it down. Stopped the landline and switched to cellphones only, one for each of us, a special affordable deal we found on walmart.com with a 2 year contract. Switched our internet over to Centurylink, works fine. Its always annoying to have to update all your contacts with your new phone numbers and internet addresses, isn't it?
Good thing I am unemployed so I have the time to spare to deal with that.
Its nice how much my cooking skills have improved tho, now I have the time to plan meals, browse cookbooks and recipes online, and learn about healthier options.
I found local organic beef and pork is not much more costly per pound than the ones at Cub Foods. We use Farmonwheels.net in Kenyon, MN; they come to the weekly St. Paul downtown Farmer's Market..even on Saturday in the winter. You can check their price list at the link at the bottom of their webpage. Their meat is all flash-frozen at the time of butchering.
A lot of food savings is from buying and fixing whole foods, real meat and vegetables and fruit. The expensive way is the faster convenience foods in packages and boxes. Why buy Bisquick when its just flour, baking soda, salt and oil? I can do so much with meat, raw vegetables and a few staples. Frozen spinach and frozen broccoli, I do use those, I keep lots of them in the freezer. We get huge family size packages of raw unfrozen salmon from Sam's Club, then I cut them into chunks at home, put them on a cookie sheet seperated for a few hours, then put frozen into ziplocs so I can take out just one or two for our meals, and that way they arent frozen in one huge chunk of 5 servings.
Convenience foods became popular when families had two wage earners. If you are home unemployed you shouldn't need the time-saving but expensive convenience foods, right? If you are home you have the time to chop vegetables and plan meals, the time to bake the breakfast oatmeal cookies from scratch and freeze the extras in Ziplocs. A few seconds in the microwave each morning, and yum hot chewy breakfast cookie with milk or tea. (I put dark-chocolate chips in mine.) Oatmeal is good for you!
Homemade noodles are flour and egg and salt, roll them out, cut in strips with a rolling pizza cutter, and boil in flavored or salted water. Or a vegan version of homemade noodles is flour and canned pumpkin and salt.
These days I do more vegetable roasting (the oven heat helps warm the house) and using my Nesco roaster as a slow-cooker, add the meat and Better Than Boullion the night before, chop the vegetables and add them in the morning, make pasta or rice to go with it when Ron gets home and there's plenty left over for him to take to work for lunches. And slow-cooking helps humidify the dry winter months. The Nesco brand is so nice because the heating elements are on the side, not the bottom, so no burnt bottoms ever, and the temperature selector is more precise than 'crockpots' are. My meals are so much better with my Nesco roaster than they were when I just had my crockpot. And yes I bought my Nesco used, from Craigslist.
Turns out vegetable roasting is so easy (you need a cookie sheet with a lip so the oil doesnt drip off) just cut up almost any vegetable in chunks, coat in olive oil, and roast. Several good articles with details are on the web. Its not just potatoes, there's beets, sweet potatoes, carrots, cabbage you can roast, onions just cut them in half, coat in oil and lay cut side down, oh yum, roasting gives you a brown crisper part and often some caramelization that you cannot get from steaming. You can roast green beans, eggplant, squash, brussels sprouts...the list goes on and on. I hear some will manage to make a potato-chip-like substitute from Kale leaves, roasted. But I havent gotten around to trying that one.
A good starter page for roasting is here
http://www.salon.com/2010/03/13/how_to_master_roasted_vegetables/
Since money is always tight, I save money where I can. So all summer I go nude to cut back on laundry costs, and in winter I wear my cheap sweats for many days in a row. Ron gets his clothes from thrift stores, his work shoes too usually. Couple weeks ago was the first time in years he got brand new shoes for work, from JCPenney. He had forgotten how much it hurts the feet to break in completely-new shoes. :)
Ron never gets a haircut, he keeps his beautiful hair long, halfway down his back, he prefers it long and hey it saves us money. Same for me, I kept mine long and uncut for years til last spring, I had it cut short by a professional, with long bangs, and now I just cut the bangs every few weeks.
I think I will have to go in to get another paid cutting soon, tho. Aw darn.
I kept a lot of the gardening supplies from when we had the house, I am planning to do some container gardening this summer, just the cost of seed and potting soil. I use Johnny's Seeds, they are in Maine so I know their seeds will do well in my cold Minnesota climate. Fresh cucumbers and summer squash, maybe some nice kale too. And radishes, Johnny's sells seeds for little round pink radishes. Fun, see? http://www.johnnyseeds.com/c-630-colored-round.aspx and purple green beans and purple broccoli.... oh I do love Johnny's.
Now if only I could get Ron to stop drinking soda.....
Robin Pierce
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An update from 10/25/2013
Yes, I'm still unemployed since 2006, and yes, my husband's pay from his job of 15 years is still too much to qualify for food stamps. We are doing ok, lots of people are worse off than we are.
Now, the paid-off car needs $6k in repairs, so instead of fixing it (or buying another car) Ron takes the bus to work each day, we get the monthly bus card, its cheaper that way. Bus stops a few yards from our rental, and we use that for getting to the grocery store and farmer's market, too. We still live paycheck to paycheck, been to a movie theatre twice in 6 years. We live small, sure, but we are okay so far. We try to eat healthier, and I have the time to cook and bake from scratch, that really helps. Since its turned cold, most nights our place smells like roasted vegetables; cabbage, carrots, Brussels sprouts, winter squash; roasting makes vegetables so delicious and the oven's heat helps keep the place warm so we can keep the thermostat lower.
