2020, am I right? It’s been a weird one. While my family was blessed to not have a loss of income due to losing a job from Covid-19 this year, we did end up having a job change at the end of the year. My husband had been unhappy with his job for YEARS, but it finally all came to a boiling point in October and he quit his job of almost 10 years!

Now, many of you do not know Brett. He is a very loyal, level-headed, honest person. He does EVERYTHING at 100%. So for his place of employment to have things so messed up that he quit- you know it was bad. Luckily, we have our debt paid off, money in savings, and were able to support him quitting before he had found a new job. (Three cheers for planning, working our asses off, and making better choices for our family!)

Luckily, Brett found a job immediately. (I knew he would.) But he did take a bit of a pay cut. I actually did the same thing when I switched from sales to banking around 4 years ago. I FULLY support a better work/life balance, so I know this was the best move for our family.

EDITING BUDGET FOR LOST INCOME

Okay, so that was a LONG intro, but I wanted to share some ways we are adjusting our normal “out of debt” budget to make our budget work for us. He was off work for about 3 weeks so he could have a bit of a brain break, so we will have around 1 month off from checks from his employment. How did we make all this work?

1. I shaved down the non-necessities. We cut out allowances for the few months we are having missing paychecks. I also lowered allowances for the new year until we are adjusted to our budget and some other ~changes~ that will be coming up.
2. We lowered our spending categories. Yeah, I have been known to get excessive with groceries and restaurant budgets when we have the wiggle room. But I also kept our budgets down to $50 for dining out and $200 for food for 2 years! I know I can do that again to help us save some money!
3. We re-evaluated sinking funds. I looked at how well our sinking funds were funded for the end of the year and decided to stop funding some that didn’t need any more money added. I kept 3 out of 9 sinking funds we utilize. For next year, I haven’t quite decided what we are doing yet. I may work on funding them all in the first 4 months of the year (triple time) and then not paying into them during the ~changes~ we have coming up. We may just totally drop to 4-5 total sinking funds and relying on our main savings for things like home repair, car repair, etc. We shall see! But it’s good to know we have options!
4. Cut back on extra payments (and investments if you need to!) We were paying extra toward my car payment and contributing a lot more to my 401k. I changed the car payment to the minimum, which was as easy as changing my automatic transfer. To be safe, I took down the contributions to my 401k. I will reevaluate that once we get a better grip on how our paychecks will look for the next year, however, it gives me peace of mind to know that the extra money is in our account in case we need it for now!
5. Utilize kindness being extended, buying secondhand, gift cards, and other freebies. No, I am not saying to go out to the food pantry (unless you really need to,) but if your mom offers to cook you dinner on a night you would rather just stay at home- take her up on it! Go on over, eat your free dinner, and be grateful. If you need something replaced, look on Facebook marketplace or Next Door to see if you can get a good deal on something gently used! Whip out all your restaurant gift cards you got a Christmas time that you were saving for a rainy day! THIS IS THE RAINY DAY! Use them!

I hope this helps, if you are trying to rearrange your budget to allow for a loss of income. I will be sharing more in the next few months and into 2021 about how we are adjusting our budget to deal with life! You can follow along here and on Youtube or Instagram for more!