How I Lost A Chunk Of Our Monthly Income (and How I am Dealing With It)

When you least expect it, life can throw us a curve ball; or maybe 3 or 4! I get how unpredictable life is, and as much as we like to think we are prepared, we really aren't.

We don't have control of our future, and we don't have control over losing your part-time job of two years. I lost a chunk of our monthly income, and it was so unexpected, and I didn't know what to do.

Yes, I lost my part-time job that provided us with over $550 every month. To some of you, that amount might not be a lot; but to some of us, that amount helped us pay the bills and helped us live comfortably. This was a blow I was not anticipating at all.

It was a blow that I didn't take well after how the year has been going for me personally. This year, I have been pushed and pushed that I say to everyone, it's the year I grew up! Though through it all, I managed to keep our finances in check, and most importantly, my sanity.

After so many blows, hearing that my job was eliminated without notice was hard for me to take. I really enjoyed what I did. It was so rewarding and such an honest job, but the truth was that it was not going to be a forever part-time job.

I knew that after my client improved, he would be ready to attend his ‘school' full-time and my services were no longer needed.

Still, it stung!

I was wondering how we were going to manage without $550 a month! Would we be OK?

Would I have to start looking for a part-time job? Quite honestly, I was so worried about our finances I was feeling sorry for myself.

The truth is that even after thinking I had overcome the feeling that I wasn't contributing to the family, I didn't.

This part-time job made me feel like I was and bringing $550 a month to our family made me feel like I was contributing my part.

Even with this part-time job, we were able to splurge on things we couldn't before, and I loved it.

We could eat out more and go out sometimes. I didn't have to worry about cutting down on this to be able to do that.

Even though I knew this job was not forever, I was careless. I got used to it and didn't think it would happen soon.

As you can see, I am my own worst enemy. This is when my husband comes in and makes things clear to me.

After feeling depressed and sorry for myself, my husband always has a way to turn my views around and count my blessings.

You see, instead of feeling sorry for myself and wasting my time worrying about the uncertain future, I should count my blessings.

Yes, I think I had the right to be upset and worried, but I also needed to move on and plan ahead.

Those wasteful days I spent all down and moody over the loss of a job, I could have spent planning.

Hey, I decided to become a stay at home mom without having this job. Why was I now acting like my days as a stay at home mom were numbered?

This is when I tell you all that I let my emotions take control, and this leads to my lousy decision makings. This is when I took a breath and realized that I had to be thankful for many things including:

• We have our health.
• We have a home.
• We have food.
• We have an emergency fund.
• We have a just in case things happen fund.
• We have a Christmas fund.
• We don't have debt.

This means that my part-time job, as much as I loved it, wasn't going to cause us to go homeless, go hungry, and in debt.

Do I still miss my $550 a month it provided me? Heck Yeah! But the truth is that with the same drive I had when I decided to become debt free, I will be able to survive and see where this path leads me.

Now that I don't have my extra 550 bucks, I have to go back to what helped me keep my spending low.

I have to work hard at making this blog more profitable. Below are my plans on how I am going to deal with this money loss:

Rework our budget

We have a monthly budget, and honestly, it just needs to be looked at and find a category we can reduce. We simply need to go back to our pre-part-time job budget and take it from there.

Rewrite our yearly goals

Look back at our 2015 goals we set for ourselves and see if they need changing. Maybe add a few, or remove a few.

Related posts:

• 60+ Fun Ideas to Make an Extra $1000 This Month
• 4 Ways To Save Money When You Are Living Paycheck To Paycheck
• 6 Things You Are Not Doing That Are Costing You Money

Go back to couponing

I wrote about how I had changed the way I use coupons at the beginning of the year. Honestly, it doesn't matter how much we have; saving money is a passion of mine. Coupons helped me eliminate my debt, and right now with the money loss, it will be a great tool to keep my grocery budget down.

Go back to stricter menu planning

Though I have used a menu plan out of habit, recently I have been more lenient when it comes to changing meals and things like that.

Shop the sales

Utilize my coupons and sales to maximize my savings is going to be one of my priorities until things get settled.

Again, I wasn't as strict as I was before because I had $550 extra.

Cut back on eating out

We enjoyed eating out more; again, we are going back to limiting ourselves from eating out.

Write about my process

Before this blog took off, I used to write about my frugal journey. This included monthly money challenges and such.

I think writing more in debt and personal posts about my finances will help me stay on track, and it will give me more accountability.

Go back to my $60/Week Grocery Challenge

A few years back, I wrote about my weekly $60 grocery challenge, and I learned so much and truly enjoyed it.

I think maybe I should go back to this and (if you all want) write about it. Now, when I did this challenge I had a baby that was a few months old.

I think this is going to be more of a challenge now, but I would love to give it a try.

Quit spending

I will go back to my non-spending ways, and one of my top posts is about NOT spending money. These tips really helped me avoid spending, and I think I will be able to do them.

As you can see, my part-time job loss really didn't set me back as bad as I thought.

I think now we have to go back to where we were before the part-time job and the extra money from the blog.

I also have to understand that our yard sale is coming up, we always are in the habit of selling things we don't need to make money.

Finding ways to make extra money is a habit of ours, and if we honestly set our minds to it, we can do it.

Also, my blog is now making money, and sooner or later, I will probably make more than my part-time job here. The worrying and the stressing really wasn't worth the days.

I have to say that I am thankful for my close friends and family who really have been my rock this year with everything that has been going on.

I truly have to say that the Joyce from years ago would not have handled what this year has thrown at us well. Proof that I have grown and matured to be the person I am today.

**As I finished this post my husband just informed me he had received a small promotion and a pay increase! SEE, things have a way to work their way out.

How have you coped when you have lost a nice chunk of income? How do you handle it? Do you stress like me, or do you wait things out? Share your story!

Turn It Up Tuesday