Week #15 - are you prepared to lose your job??

So last week at work there was a pretty major lay off and many people lost their jobs. They laid off out of the departments that were slow on work, but because its a union shop if the people whose jobs were eliminated had seniority over some unaffected people they were allowed to 'bump', or take a job from a more junior person. When the dust settled 20 people were walked out the door and forced to head the the unemployment office.

It's almost impossible to be prepared to completely lose your main source of income, but since it can happen to anyone at anytime its something that you should at least try to keep in the back of your mind. I have 11 years in at my job so I was not effected by the lay off, but after last week I am 20 people closer to the bottom of the list and if there is another lay off I could lose my job.

I definitely don't have enough money to stop working (or I would) and I probably couldn't pay all my bills on only unemployment, but thanks to money I save I could make do for a short time and still pay all my bills. I'm not saying that I'm going to start another bank account labeled 'lost my job savings' but its just something to keep in mind. I have money set aside for a future vacation, but that money could have easily gone toward paying my mortgage if I had lost my job last week.

With all that said, I was one of the lucky people that did get a paycheck this week. It was my 2nd paycheck of the money but last week I deposited the first paycheck of the month into my mortgage account (see Week #14's blog). This week the check for $611.29 is going into my checking account to pay my credit card and other bills. $38.83 went into my 401K & as always I made my $20 vacation transfer, but that's all for saving this week.

So I didn't save that much money this week, but the as soon as I knew how much my paycheck was for I paid off both credit cards that had balances on them. It wasn't that much, but I avoided another month of interest

Here is the week 15 wrap up:
$38.83 to my 401K
$20.00 to my vacation fund

which makes the 2013 totals:
$445.21 in my 401K
$300.00 in the vacation fund
$26.90 in the piggy bank
$100.00 in the quarterly loan payment account
$50.00 in my vet bill savings
$259.95 in my money market
$259.94 in my car account

For this weeks bonus, I want you to think about the credit cards you have and why you have them. Next weeks blog will be focused on credit cards because I made a change in my cards this week but wanted to focus on the lay off for this weeks blog. Just think about the number of cards you have, the balances (if any) that you carry on them and what you get from the cards that you use.