Finance Plan

I couldn't sleep well the night earlier. Ex-coworkers populated my dreams and I kept thinking of my old job. I really liked my old office, work and co-workers. I woke up for good at 6am (9pm Tokyo time) and contacted two of my colleagues in Japan. We chatted on Line about the unfortunate series of events. Both of them went through a period of unemployment; one was let go from his law firm in 2008 or so and one was let go from a major Japanese video game company in 2011. Both survived, moved on to respectable companies and are doing well. Assurances that I would do the same from them made me feel better.

As to my search, I spent most of the day working on a financial plan and reviewed materials on how to file for unemployment insurance. I'll go into filing for unemployment insurance (based on the materials and my experience doing so over the next few days).

As to the financial plan, having a family like mine accustomed to living an upper-middle class lifestyle requires me to conduct a careful accounting on what needs to be cut back and how long we can survive on the job search based on our savings and the unemployment insurance amounts we will receive. For this financial plan, it's probably easiest to start with Excel to create a spreadsheet.
There's a really easy-to-use template called "Simple monthly budget" as shown below.



First start with your monthly expenses and click on the tab Monthly Expenses on the bottom of the page:




Then, when in the Monthly Expenses chart, enter your itemized expenses as follows:


Once that is finished, click on the Monthly Income tab on the bottom of the page.



And identical to the Monthly Expenses, enter the amounts you will receive as income, including the monthly amount of unemployment insurance. I'll go deeper into the calculation about how much you will receive for unemployment insurance in the next few days. As a primer, a handbook for this calculation can be found here if you live in Illinois:

 http://www.ides.illinois.gov/IDES%20Forms%20and%20Publications/CLI105L.pdf


Once you have entered your Monthly Income, click on the Summary tab on the bottom of the screen.



The Summary chart will detail how much each month will cost you in the form of the number called the Balance. It will be a negative number, one that hopefully won't be too shocking.



Once you have this number, you can create another chart subtracting your monthly Balance from the amounts you have in savings. This calculation will determine how long you can survive on your job search without getting loans from friends/family members/use credit cards, etc. I'll detail how to do that in tomorrow's post.

Mom invited us over to dinner, so not much was accomplished on the applications and contact to additional friends front. Mom treated for an Aldi pizza. They have refrigerated/non-frozen pizzas for 5-6 dollars. It was a great cheap dinner as it tasted really good. I recommend getting one whether you have a job or not.



That night a colleague in Japan gave me a Line call to encourage me on the search. As described above, he had lost his job at a law firm years ago and was able to get on his feet in a few months. His concern and encouragement improved my spirits. I also talked to my HK buddy who had a plethora of ideas to get past this difficult time. So far my friends and family have been great in getting us through this. If you are in the same boat and haven't done so yet, please reach out to friends and family right away. They are awesome.

Day Two Lessons: 

1. Creating a Finance Plan for Your Job Search Is Essential and Easy Using Excel 

2. Aldi Pizza is a Great Cheap Eat 

Total Contacts Reached Out To: 13 

Total Applications: 1