SOA - another newbie

justjustine

DCFC79 wrote: »

Just a thought but can your husband do dog walking (assuming he is with dogs) in between job interviews/applications ?

Obviously cheaper if he could walk rather than drive to do it, your in a city so maybe not possible.

Haha. I'll suggest it He's not a big animal lover (it took us years to convince him to agree to kittens/hamsters!) and is interviewing for international board-level positions, but you never know...
I'll also suggest it to my teens, who may be a better fit ;-)

DCFC79

justjustine wrote: »

Haha. I'll suggest it He's not a big animal lover (it took us years to convince him to agree to kittens/hamsters!) and is interviewing for international board-level positions, but you never know...
I'll also suggest it to my teens, who may be a better fit ;-)

Yes a good point re your teens.

QueenBeruthiel

Cut these and you have saved most of it, without even touching car, hols, Christmas....

Mobile phones 60 Household maintenance 200 Pocket money 50 Dry cleaning 12 Family days out 33.33 Cinema/Theatre trips 33.33 Eating out. 300 Weekends away 66.67 omplimentary therapies . 50 Haircuts. 60 Dentistry 166.67 Fitness/Sports/Gym 40 New clothes 166.67 Coffees/Sandwiches/Snacks 43.33

justjustine

QueenBeruthiel wrote: »

Cut these and you have saved most of it, without even touching car, hols, Christmas....

Mobile phones 60 Household maintenance 200 Pocket money 50 Dry cleaning 12 Family days out 33.33 Cinema/Theatre trips 33.33 Eating out. 300 Weekends away 66.67 omplimentary therapies . 50 Haircuts. 60 Dentistry 166.67 Fitness/Sports/Gym 40 New clothes 166.67 Coffees/Sandwiches/Snacks 43.33

Thank you. Sadly the 200€ maintenance fee is a compulsory service charge for our apartment building. I will try to reduce the phone bill (€60/month includes 2 mobiles + landline + internet) but can't get rid altogether, as my husband needs to be contactable for job-hunting!

The rest will definitely be going. I am also taking on a few extra hours at both my jobs...

FBaby

Your issue is very much about planning for the future and looking at all different scenarios from the worse one to the best one. Ie. best is your OH gets another well paid job soon and then you graduate and also get a well paid job. The worse being that he doesn't, he doesn't receive his redundancy payment any longer (how long before it becomes regressive and then gets to 0?), and you can't get a job as expected.

Your SOA shows that you have not adapted to your circumstances and have continued to live as before. There are many things that you could cut down, but it's about the sacrifices you are ready to make to adjust to your financial situation. You say that you need the car for your child, but if you are in a decently sized town, then surely you can rely on public transport.

My advice would be to do an SOA taking into account all main scenarios for the next 1-5 years, and then make the cuts that will allow you to reduce your debts. It might be that you reduce everything to the bare minimum, but with the hope that once your OH gets a better job, you can then start spending more, or it could be that you go half way, but continue with the same expenditure even when your income increase significantly.

justjustine

FBaby wrote: »

Your issue is very much about planning for the future and looking at all different scenarios from the worse one to the best one. Ie. best is your OH gets another well paid job soon and then you graduate and also get a well paid job. The worse being that he doesn't, he doesn't receive his redundancy payment any longer (how long before it becomes regressive and then gets to 0?), and you can't get a job as expected.

Your SOA shows that you have not adapted to your circumstances and have continued to live as before. There are many things that you could cut down, but it's about the sacrifices you are ready to make to adjust to your financial situation. You say that you need the car for your child, but if you are in a decently sized town, then surely you can rely on public transport.

My advice would be to do an SOA taking into account all main scenarios for the next 1-5 years, and then make the cuts that will allow you to reduce your debts. It might be that you reduce everything to the bare minimum, but with the hope that once your OH gets a better job, you can then start spending more, or it could be that you go half way, but continue with the same expenditure even when your income increase significantly.

Thank you. We (wrongly) assumed that he would find a new position quickly and hadn't planned for more than a few months of unemployment. Finding ourselves in 2016 and still in this position has been a big shock. I've just had a major (emergency) operation and can't work anyway for several more weeks, which has shaken us even more. So I've decided to use the time I have at home on sick leave to get a grip on our finances and make whatever changes it takes to get us through and build up a decent nest egg to prevent this happening again!

We sold our 1 year-old car last summer when the redundancy was imminent. We sold it for 22K, put 20K in the bank to live on until the emplyment insurance kicked in (after 4 months) and bought an 11 year-old car for 2K. We can't manage without, as whilst we live in a big city, my daughter's residential school is in a small village 25 km away, with no public transport options and she only boards there Monday-Friday, so the twice-weekly taxi fares would be outrageous with no car.

This morning I've contacted Orange and reduced the monthly phone package to the bare bones minimum, saving us 20€ a month.

I'm going to have a big talk with the kids tonight about saving water and using less electricity and gas (I included gas under electric in the table, as they appear on the same bills).

I'm also going to investigate the Air B&B thing more thoroughly. We have the paint needed, it just means my husband finding the time to put it on. There are sales on homeware in all the shops here right now, so maybe we can find a pair of plain white sheets going cheap (we only have 2 sets of double sheets and neither are in good enough condition to use for paying guests!). Our appartment is ideally located for people needing an overnight stop en route to the Alps, so this is probably a good time of year to rent out a room!

He will be able to claim the full rate of benefits until December, then a gradually decreasing rate for several (9 I think) months after that. Hopefully he will have a new job long before then! I can't even imagine what it would do to him psychologically if that were not to happen :-(

m4rc

Sorry but I can only be honest and a little harsh. You simply can't carry on like this, so Inge have to change. I don't see how you can study, look after an elderly relative and have two jobs and your partner hasn't worked in years. I have employed people on very big salaries in the past and if someone turned up for an interview with all the skills but a long history of unemployment and no excuse other than they couldn't find a job then they wouldn't even get to the end of the interview. In fact I wouldn't have finished reading the cv to invite them for an interview, there is simply no excuse. If someone turned up without all the skills and experience but had been retraining or in education while holding down two part time jobs earning minimum wage to make sure their family could eat then I would really want to find out more about this person, I would consider they would be worth investing in. You can't sit and wait for the right job, you take any job, you keep incredibly busy, you start your own business, you do anything to make sure your family did not suffer or struggle and you were in the best position possible to apply for the perfect job when it came along.

It's not his fault at all that this is his second redundancy in 3 years, that is really awful and most be hard to get over, but he needs to be fighting hard to make sure at the next interview he is the only applicant worth considering. There will be people going for the position who already have a job, people with more skills, people wih less skills, he needs to show he is the only option, the perfect candidate for the job.

Little things like the haircuts, you can get your haircut for under 10 euros in the UK, it's a bit different for a woman, but for a guy, a haircut is a haircut, it's in he dressing, how he apples product and combs it and then how clean and tidy his clothes are. I owned hairdressing salons in the past, a qualified barber is good enough for any man and the higher price ones are simply charging more because if the salon looks expensive and is in a high end high street people will pay anything - I know because I fed on that mentality.

Would it be possible for you to pause your education for a while to bring in a little more?

The kids, you know kids are strong, if they know how hard things are they won't need their pocket money. You don't really owe it to them, of course you want them to have it, but they will have to go without, it won't harm them. If they know how tough info are I bet they will offer to not take it anyway.

You KNOW what needs to change, as you've said so above already, you can't do the trips and meals out and holidays, just as so many families throughout the world don't. So many people don't even have a roof over their heads, you need to think like that for a while, think how lucky you are just to be healthy and happy as a family and live the most ridiculously frugal life in the short term. It won't be easy, but it will be worth it and help to ease some of the worries and stress which won't be helping your arthritis at all!

I wish you the best of luck

QueenBeruthiel

Justine, is your husband getting feedback post interviews to find out why he did not get these jobs? Is he on Linkedin? Is he networking to find out about the many (supposedly) jobs which are not even advertised?

justjustine

QueenBeruthiel wrote: »

Justine, is your husband getting feedback post interviews to find out why he did not get these jobs? Is he on Linkedin? Is he networking to find out about the many (supposedly) jobs which are not even advertised?

Yes. He always contacts the recruiters afterwards to ask for feedback.
He is on LinkedIn and many of the positions he's applied for were through there.
He has a huge network, which he "nourrishes" and maintains and has had several opportunities offered to him via contacts or even direct-approach headhunters.

Over the past 8 months he has had many 3rd, 4th even 5th-round interviews - several of which even involved flying overseas to group HQs etc - only to end up in the final 2, for them to choose the other candidate. EVERY.SINGLE.TIME! :mad:

The feedback he's been getting is consistently positive, but employers seem to be choosing slightly more junior (younger, i.e. cheaper) candidates. He is 47.
He's also applied for several hundred lower-paid positions, but has not even had interviews for those, as he is considered "over-qualified"! It's very frustrating...

Luckily the head-hunters seem to love him and still keep putting him forward for other positions. They all seem to believe in him, but the job market is strange right now - even at senior executive level!

The first redundancy was a result of the group being bought-out by an American multi-national, who ejected all the European executive team. The second one was in a smaller firm which went under last summer and fired the highest earners first!

He's still getting several interviews a week. He had one yesterday which went well, and is flying to another European capital early next week for the next round (Group HQ) interview. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this might be the one...

justjustine

I've just contacted our utilities provider to arrange a monthly payment plan, so at least there will be no huge surprise bills, just a regular direct debit.

We've been lucky to have a mild winter so far, so the heating hasn't been on much. Like I said above, I'm going to talk to the kids tonight about saving water and electricity.

I'm also going to cancel my contact lense subscription this afternoon and stick to wearing my glasses.

I've also just spoken to my husband and he's agreed to paint the spare room this weekend and put it on AirB&B