MAJOR SETBACK

Well, things just got worse on the employment situation.  But it's hubby, not me.  Or at least not yet.  Mine still hasn't improved any, so I could be out of a job any day.  Hubby got laid off today.  They laid off all the workers except for upper management, of course.  He'll apply for unemployment and his friend has some work for him to do in the meantime, but it's not anything steady. 

I was really hoping that this would not happen.  The only good thing is that he was laid off and he didn't quit at least.  I know he's been wanting to quit really bad.  Still, this really sucks because I was just getting stuff caught up and some past due stuff paid that was caused by last year's hurricane season.  And my job is on shaky ground, so we can't really depend on it too much.  Not to mention I make half of what he made weekly, so we're talking a significant reduction of income.  If he finds something else around here, most likely he'll be taking a pay cut as it is.  The only way he could maybe make better money is to be willing to drive down towards Melbourne every day.  It'd have to be a good bit of money to offset the gas, time and wear and tear on a vehicle.

I'm thinking we may have to sell all these radio control toys he's been buying lately.  He said he doesn't want to, but it may come to that.  I still have a garage full of stuff I should probably go through and see what I might be able to sell.  We don't really have any extra bills right now, except for cable/Internet.  I'm not willing to part with Internet access, but the cable could go for all I care.  There's hardly anything good on TV these days.  Other than that, all we have is our housing, utilities, car payment, and insurance.  I was trying to pay off some old bills from last year because of the hurricanes, but that will have to be put on hold for now.

Why does it seem when you're almost caught up or things seem to be going okay that something always has to happen to set you back?  Some people work at a place for years and never seem to have to worry about their job or they work in a field where it's easy to find another job equally as good if they do get laid off.  They don't have to worry too much about a loss of income or they make enough money that they actually have the 6 months living expenses set aside in savings just in case.  I haven't been able to save anything and I just now started to.  Every single time I've started a savings account or to save in any way, something bad happens and I either end up having to use my savings to bail us out or as it is in my case right now, I can't even touch my savings because it's a 401K, so it does us little good.  But if I had known this would happen, I wouldn't have had so much taken out for my 401K.  I was wanting to put away as much as possible since I'm starting so late in my life to save.  I'd actually have to put aside my entire salary to get even close to what I'd like to have for retirement, which obviously isn't going to happen.  So I know I'm not going to retire.  I'll work until I drop dead, most likely.  But at least I was hoping to have something saved to help out.  It just seems every time I do start saving, we have a major setback.

It just seems at times we take 1 step forward and then end up 2 steps back.  I hate feeling that I'm spinning my wheels just to be where I'm at and that I can't get ahead at all.