Gateway project promises 'game-changing' development for Marshalls Creek

One of the last parcels sought for the massive Smithfield Gateway retail and residential project near the Marshalls Creek interchange of Interstate 80 has been acquired.The three-phase Gateway project — including a supermarket, 30 retail stores or restaurants, multifamily housing units, hotel and medical offices — will be centered on the 81-acre former Mosier’s Farm property that Legend Properties acquired last fall.Now Legend has bought a six- [...]

Source Business - poconorecord.com http://ift.tt/1U1RHxg

Retirement planning and sunscreen — both are vital

How many of you spend more time planning for your next vacation than planning for your retirement?Think about it and if you raised your hand, then you are not alone.According to a study by MassMutual titled “Taking Chances,” the future does not appear to be a top priority for many.The study asked a total of 2,016 Americans ages 18 and older questions about the amount of planning that they do in preparation for various life events.The results revealed [...]

Source Business - poconorecord.com http://ift.tt/1U7bTTI

Canfield's: A century of old-school service in Stroudsburg

The Canfields have, for nearly a century, supplied animal feed and farm products in Monroe County. Generations ago, their feed mill in Bartonsville found a new home in Stroudsburg. That family-owned shop at 315 Lower Main Street continues its mission today.“My great grandfather started this business,” said Bill Canfield, current owner of Canfield’s Pet & Farm. His great grandfather, James Canfield, left North Carolina for the Poconos around the turn of the [...]

Source Business - poconorecord.com http://ift.tt/21fgx0P

The Tools I Use to Manage Work, Money, and Life

Every year or two since I started The Simple Dollar, I’ve sat down and reviewed the wide variety of tools – both electronic and otherwise – that I use to manage my financial, professional, and personal life. These are the things that I use every single day – or nearly every single day – in order to keep track of our financial state, of the endless things that I need to do, of the ideas I have, of the appointments I need to keep, and so on.

Why is this important? What does it have to do with finances? There are a lot of reasons, so let’s walk through them a little bit.

First of all, the tools I use primarily exist so that I don’t forget things. I don’t want to forget when bills are due. I don’t want to forget when I need to review our investments. I don’t want to forget when my wife’s birthday is. I don’t want to forget that great article idea I had the other day.

I need to be able to store these things as efficiently as possible. It’s also just as important to me to have these things be immediately available to me when I need them and, in fact, even nudge me a little bit so that I’m aware of them when I need to be.

The financial stuff is obvious in terms of the impact on my financial life. Keeping up on my bills and my investments and my spending has an obvious positive impact on my account balances.

The professional stuff is similarly important, as it is those pieces of professional information – ideas, appointments, and so on – that enable me to efficiently complete the things I need to complete to earn an income. Plus, the more efficiently I complete them, the more time I have available for new professional endeavors or more personal time.

The personal stuff… well, it’s a huge part of why I care about the financial and professional stuff. I love my work, but in the end, I work to live. I don’t live to work. The center of my life is my family and my personal interests. Those things rank above all else in my life, and my financial and professional needs feed those things.

There’s another aspect to all of this that’s just as important as not forgetting these things. The fact is that if I try to keep a long to-do list and a calendar and a bunch of article ideas in my head, that’s going to eat up some of my focus. I’m not going to be able to

For me, using the best tools to manage these things is vital. These tools keep things out of my brain, but at the same time, they ensure that I don’t forget them, either. They’re really an extension of my brain, which enables me to take on more things than I ever would be able to do without them.

So, let’s take a look at these tools.

Pocket notebook

For taking freeform notes everywhere

I don’t like to go anywhere without a small pocket notebook jammed in my front pocket. I use it to quickly write down ideas, sketches, addresses, phone numbers, pieces of inspiration, things that need doing, lists – pretty much every piece of information that comes up suddenly.

About twice a day, I go through the last few pages of my notebook and make sure I’ve dealt with each item on those pages. Have I added any things that need doing to my to-do list manager (see below)? Have I properly stored any new contacts in my phone? Have I done something sensible with every item in that notebook so I can find them later?

I prefer to use Field Notes pocket notebooks for a couple of reasons. For one, they hold up really well in my pocket – I can get through an entire notebook without them falling apart. For another, they come in two formats I really like: gridded, which means that every page is full of grid lines, and dot grid, which means that every page is just full of rows of dots that you can connect to form a grid if you really want.

Larger notebook

For taking notes while learning

I take copious notes whenever I’m taking a class (I take a lot of online classes and occasionally an offline class) or when I’m trying to extract key ideas from a book or an article. I’ve learned that doing this is the best way for me to actually learn what the article or book or lecture is about and extract many of the ideas and facts and actually incorporate them into my head and remember them later. If I take notes using a digital tool to type them in, it’s much faster to record the notes but my mental retention of those ideas is far worse.

So, I’ll sit down with a larger notebook, start a fresh page by titling and dating it, and write down every piece of information that I read that I’m trying to mentally process, as well as my own reflections and connections on those things. I find the process of writing these out by hand goes a long way toward making those ideas stick in my head.

I’m not too picky when it comes to notebooks – anything works. I do find that it takes a lot of time to completely fill up a notebook, so I don’t mind paying more to get a notebook that won’t fall apart over time. I’d rather be able to continue to reference it later on after the last page is filled. My favorite notebook is the Baron Fig Confidant, of which I’ve filled several; they basically still look new, even after every page is filled with writing and they lay flat when I’m writing in them. I’ve used – and still use – inexpensive notebooks of all kinds, though, as the Confidants aren’t something I buy regularly because they’re expensive.

Pens

For actually writing the notes

So, what do I actually take these notes with? For me, the ideal pen is one that writes with a very thin line, doesn’t leak in my pocket (meaning it has a very hard plastic case that won’t break and minimizes pen leak risk, and preferably has a clicking mechanism), and writes every time. I have a preference for black ink, but that’s not a deal breaker.

I have these needs because I’m pretty much always carrying a pen in my pocket alongside my pocket notebook and when I want that pen, it needs to work 99.99% of the time. I also want a thin line so that smudging is minimized and I can fit more words on a line while still being legible later.

For me, the best pen I’ve ever found to match these needs at a reasonable price is the Uniball Signo 207 Ultra Micro Point pen with black ink. I buy these pens in bulk whenever I find them on sale – and by bulk I mean 100 pens or more. These are the best inexpensive pens I’ve ever used – in fact, I’ve never found a “nice” pen that I like half as well as these. They’re just about perfect for my needs and I can often get them well below $1 apiece.

Evernote

For storing notes I’ll want to reference later

Evernote is kind of my “catch all” drawer for notes and ideas of all kinds. If it’s a note that I think I’ll want to find or reference in the future, I put it in there. I use it for arranging ideas for writing and for videos and for podcasts. I use it for personal gift idea lists. I use it for countless things.

I tend to store notes that I know I’m going to want to look at again really soon in a default “Miscellaneous” folder which I check all the time. Other notes get filed into a long series of appropriate folders so I can go to just those notes if I need them.

For a while, I used to take notes from classes and articles directly into Evernote, but I figured out after a while that my retention and reflection on those ideas was pretty low if I took them via typing. Thus, I moved away from taking electronic notes on subjects that I was trying to understand and process and evaluate.

Later, I moved to taking pictures of every page in every notebook and adding it to Evernote, but I stopped doing that with my larger notebooks that were just filled with notes from classes and books and articles. Instead, I just use my phone to take pictures of my pocket notebook pages. Evernote uses some pretty sweet technology to make those pages automatically searchable by text, so if I want to see all pages where I wrote “Dave Ramsey,” I can just type that into the search box. I can also look at pages by date.

TextWrangler

For writing articles and other things

TextWrangler is the successor to BBEdit Lite, which was my text editor of choice back when I spent most of every day writing computer code. I also found that I really liked using it for writing blog posts and the first drafts of a lot of the papers and documentation that I needed to do. Eventually, I moved from BBEdit Lite to TextWrangler because BBEdit Lite stopped being updated or really supported much at all.

Why do I use it? Familiarity is a big part, but I really really like how it handles text replacement. I often have reason to go through pieces of text and replace certain words or phrases with alternatives and I just love how TextWrangler does that.

Almost every article ever written for The Simple Dollar was “second drafted” and edited in BBEdit Lite or TextWrangler, and that’s where many first drafts happened, too. That’s about the highest compliment I can give it.

Google Docs

For writing documents and sharing them

Sometimes, sending a plain text document doesn’t really work. I need to send a more “complete” document to people, one with headings and bold type and so on.

In those cases, I use Google Docs, which is a really nice free word processing program. Over the last few years, I’ve migrated completely away from Microsoft Word toward using Google Docs for everything, mostly for the platform cross-compatibility – you can use Google Docs on pretty much anything with a web browser.

It may not have every single feature of Word, but it has every single feature that I use.

Google Sheets

For “running the numbers”

I could basically copy and paste the above block of text, except swap “Word” for “Excel” and “Docs” for “Sheets.” Most of the same reasons that I switched from Word to Docs apply to switching away from Excel and to Sheets.

It has every feature I really want from a spreadsheet program. I can use it virtually anywhere. I don’t have to worry about version compatibility. And it’s free.

So what do I use it for? Every article on The Simple Dollar where I seem to be “running the numbers” on something goes back to Google Sheets. I use that for calculating interest rates, payment plans, and many other things along those lines. It works like a charm.

Omnifocus

For managing all of my tasks

Omnifocus is my to-do list manager of choice. Basically, if there’s a task I need to take care of, it goes into Todoist – even stuff that I intend to do at some vague point in the future.

Omnifocus just does everything I want a to-do list manager to do. It does all of the stuff that regular to-do list managers do – lets you group tasks together into “projects,” lets you set due dates for tasks, and so on – but it does other things I find really helpful, like letting you create some projects that have to be finished sequentially while others have steps that can be finished in any order. I also really really really like recurring projects, since each week of writing for The Simple Dollar is essentially a recurring weekly project. It’s absolutely perfect for my needs.

Omnifocus is a bit expensive (thank you again to the reader who gifted me a copy of it), so it might not be for everyone. A really good free alternative to Omnifocus is Todoist. It was actually the list manager I was using before switching to Omnifocus and it does most of the things Omnifocus does at a very nice price.

Google Calendar

For managing my schedule and appointments

If I have an appointment of any kind, it goes into Google Calendar. If I want to block off a chunk of time for any reason, it goes into Google Calendar. Everything I need to do at a certain time goes into Google Calendar.

Doing that by default makes that calendar a very trusted resource for me. I absolutely trust it when I’m looking at the days ahead to see what needs to be done at certain times. I absolutely trust it when I want to block out an afternoon to do something fun or to bear down on a project.

It works on basically every device that I use. On most of them, I have all kinds of alarms and alerts already integrated and set up so that I’m notified a week in advance of upcoming birthdays and other such events that I might need to prep for and I get lots of reminders just prior to important appointments. It helps me with so much – and it’s free.

You Need a Budget

For keeping track of my spending

I still use the classic 4.0 version of You Need a Budget to keep track of my spending and my budgetary concerns (I haven’t “upgraded” to the new subscription-based version and don’t plan to).

It does everything I want from a personal finance software package. I can use it pretty much anywhere. I can easily enter my spending as it happens. I can enter spending later on, too. I can look at endless views and reports of that data once it’s in there. I’m not sharing that data with any third party service or leaving it on any server that I don’t have control over. It’s very easy and pleasant to use. It’s practically perfect for me.

It’s not free, however. The best free alternative I’ve found is the PearBudget spreadsheet, which works in pretty much any spreadsheet program I’ve ever tried. It does most of the work of You Need a Budget, though it’s not quite as slick in terms of all of the views you can generate.

Gmail

For emails big and small

I’ve been using Gmail as my primary email tool for almost a decade now. It just does almost everything I want it to do. It works everywhere I go. It makes reading, replying, composing, and searching through email about as easy as can be. It lets me drag and drop attachments really easily. And it’s free.

As much as I like it, I do have a few nits to pick with it and it is possible that at some point in the future I might use something else. The biggest nit I have is that it doesn’t thread conversations with people very well. Often, I just want to see all of the email that I’ve exchanged with a single person over time but I can’t really view all of that at once with Gmail.

(I have been looking at Unibox as a possible alternative to Gmail. I have not tried it or attempted switching to it as of yet, but it does one thing I really like and that’s center everything around conversations with people rather than messages received. It essentially makes email look like text messaging, in other words, and I can really see how it’s useful. On the other hand, it’s expensive and Gmail is free and it would require me to get used to a different email workflow.)

Flowstate

For focusing on a specific writing task

When I want to bear down on a specific writing task, particularly a first draft of an article or a book chapter or something like that, I actually don’t like using TextWrangler (or any word processing program). It is very easy for me to get distracted in those programs because I’ll find myself searching for the perfect word, only to find that I end up distracted, looking at a website or something else.

Flowstate solves that perfectly. It’s a full screen text editor – you can’t even see anything else when you’re using it. When you start, you set a timer and that timer starts counting down when you begin typing. If you stop for a moment, the words that you’ve already written slowly begin to fade over a five second period (it’s slow at first, but then becomes more and more obvious) and if they fade to white you lose all of it.

Now, why would you want this? When I start Flowstate, the goal is to get words down on paper as rapidly as possible without being distracted. It doesn’t have to be perfect – it just has to be good enough to convey the idea. It also forces you to not be distracted because if you do get distracted, you lose everything you’ve been working on, so you have to stay on task. All of those things are very useful to me as a writer, and this tool has both enabled me to write first drafts faster than before but it’s also improved my ability to focus on the task at hand.

If you don’t want to buy the software, there’s a free web version of the app that does the same thing – The Most Dangerous Writing App. If you use this, I highly recommend using it in full screen mode to minimize distraction.

Google Chrome

For visiting websites

The biggest reason I use Google Chrome is that I use many of Google’s other web services and I know that Google Chrome will display those services in the best way possible. Google is not going to make their web browser and their web services incompatible.

Honestly, however, most of the mainstream web browsers – Firefox, Safari, Chrome, even Microsoft’s more recent web offerings – are all really good. I don’t have a significant complaint about any of them.

I simply choose Chrome because of the implied guarantee of interoperability with Google’s web applications, of which I use many.

Paprika

For managing recipes and grocery lists

Paprika is a little application that serves as a recipe database, a meal planning tool, and a grocery list manager. It does all of those things so well and in such a smart integrated fashion that it’s become a vital part of our meal planning routine. Even though I could do the bits and pieces that this app provides in other programs (like Evernote), Paprika just makes it all easy.

Our usual meal planning routine involves grabbing a grocery store flyer, finding recipes that match the ingredients that are on sale in that flyer, using those recipes to chart out a meal plan, and then building a grocery list from that meal plan. Paprika helps with everything in that workflow except for grabbing the store flyer. Paprika stores all of the recipes our family has ever liked and integrates with lots of different online recipe sites to gather more recipes (and also makes it easy to enter new ones out of cookbooks, which I do manually when I’m reading a new cookbook). You can search those recipes by ingredient really easily. Then, you can pull the recipes into a meal plan with just a click and add all of the ingredients for that recipe to a shopping list with just another click (you can double or triple or halve the recipe sizes, too). I then check off things from the grocery list that I know we have on hand, as well as adding staples that we may need during the week, and then I’m off to the store.

I love this tool and consider it essential for our meal planning and grocery shopping. Our routine saves us significant money every single week versus just wandering the grocery store aisles.

1Password

For managing passwords

Given that I use a number of different services for my work and personal life and that I want these services to be as secure as I can make them, I use complex and unique passwords for each site. I manage all of those passwords in one tool – 1Password.

1Password helps me generate long random passwords for lots of different sites. The actual database for my passwords is encrypted and sits offline. It’s protected by one very long and very complicated password that I know by heart.

Thus, if I ever need to log into a service I consider important, I get into 1Password, copy my password for that service, and paste it in wherever I need it.

It takes a little bit of time, but it ensures that I have very hard to break passwords for my important stuff and if a hacker were able to get into one service, that hacker wouldn’t be able to access others because they all have different passwords. That’s well worth it for me.

Final Thoughts

This isn’t a complete list of the tools I use every day, but it covers most of the things I rely on for financial, professional, and personal activities in my life. They perform a bedrock of ensuring that I never lose an idea, a to-do list, or an appointment. They help me with brainstorming and calculating and sharing ideas. They help keep me safe and help me to not get distracted by having to keep ideas in my head.

They’re my tools, and I use them every day.

The post The Tools I Use to Manage Work, Money, and Life appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

Source The Simple Dollar The Simple Dollar http://ift.tt/1PlvDvr

Two Rewards Cards Every Amazon Prime Member Needs

The internet has transformed the way many of us shop and stock our homes with food and other supplies (just ask any brick-and-mortar small business owner). Where we once drove from store to store or even town to town to pick up essentials for daily living, we can now order what we need online at any time of the day or night, while sitting in bed, and with the click of a mouse.

Obviously, the impact of Amazon.com over the past two decades can’t be understated: It’s been nothing short of transformative. Thanks to features like Amazon Prime, which offers members free two-day shipping on everything, and “Subscribe and Save,” American appetites for online shopping have expanded far beyond books and hard-to-find or specialty items to everyday essentials like diapers, housewares, paper towels, cooking supplies, and even dog food.

Two Rewards Credit Cards You Need if You Shop on Amazon.com

Avoiding the mall and shopping online will definitely save you time, and it will occasionally save you some money to boot. With the right credit card in your wallet, you can also earn some extra cash back at Amazon.com during certain times of the year.

Here are two cards to consider if you love and use Amazon.com regularly anyway, and want to boost your rewards to a whole new level:

Discover it® Cashback Match™

The Discover it® Cashback Match™ lets you earn tiered rewards that rotate every quarter. For most of your purchases, you’ll earn a flat 1% back on every dollar you spend. However, you can also earn 5% back on your first $1,500 spent in categories that rotate every quarter.

When Discover announced its annual “bonus categories” for 2016, they didn’t leave us guessing. In fact, they made it clear that purchases made on Amazon.com would qualify for a 5% cash-back bonus in not just one quarter but two: from the beginning of July until the end of December this year. But, here’s the kicker: Since Discover is matching all of the points you earn your first year, you can actually earn 10% back on Amazon.com purchases during the entire second half of 2016.

The full list of categories that let you earn 5% cash back (plus matching funds after your first 12 months with the card) in 2016 include restaurants and movies (April through June), home improvement stores & Amazon.com (July through September), and Amazon.com and more (October through December).

Since you’ll only earn 5% back on your first $1,500 spent in each quarterly bonus category, your initial cash back bonus is limited to $75. But when Discover doubles the points you earn at the end of your first 12 months, you could potentially have $150 in “extra” cash back each quarter. And remember, you always earn 1% back on every purchase you make, with no limit, and Discover will double that cash back at the end of your first year, too. Best of all, this card never charges an annual fee.

Do remember, however, that Discover makes you sign up manually for each promotion added to your card. So the 5% (and 10%) won’t come automatically; instead, you need to sign into your account and activate the promotion each quarter you plan to participate.

Discover it® Cashback Match™

Highlights:

Chase Freedom®

When the Chase Freedom® card announced its quarterly bonus categories for 2016, they didn’t change much from the year before. Other than switching around the groceries and restaurant categories a bit, it was to stay much the same.

For October through December 2016, this card is offering 5% on “Holiday Shopping and more.” If history tells us anything, that means we will earn 5% back on Amazon.com and a few other online retailers with our Chase Freedom® card in the fourth quarter this year. After all, they have doled out 5% on Amazon.com each holiday season since 2013, though they added the Amazon.com category in January the year before.

If we’re extremely lucky, we might even see a promotion similar to the one from last year. From October through December 2015, Chase offered an amazing 10% back on your first $1,500 spent on Amazon.com, presumably to compete with Discover. For those who travel often and transfer points to their Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card, this was an absolute dream.

We shouldn’t count our eggs before they hatch, of course, but it would be nice to get a repeat on that promotion. Either way, it’s pretty safe to say the Chase Freedom® card will offer at least 5% back the last quarter of this year.

Just remember, as with Discover, earning 5% with your Chase Freedom® card requires a little bit of work on your part. Unlike some other cards that award bonus points automatically, the Chase Freedom® card requires you to “activate” your card. If you haven’t done it for this quarter’s bonus category yet, you can activate it here or through your online account management interface.

Chase Freedom®

Highlights:

Hate Rotating Rewards? Consider a Cash-Back Card that Offers a Flat Rate

If you like the idea of earning up to 10% on purchases made through Amazon.com, signing up for either one of these cards might be a smart idea. With a top no-fee rewards card in your wallet, you can earn a bare minimum of 1% back for every dollar you spend, plus up to 10% depending on which card you choose and their current promotions.

If you don’t like keeping track of rotating categories or remembering to sign up for a new promotion each quarter, you can also consider a card that offers a flat rate of cash back.

The Chase Freedom Unlimited℠ is a solid option if you want flat rate rewards. With this card, you’ll earn a flat 1.5% back on every purchase you make, including those made on Amazon.com. Plus, you’ll earn a hefty signup bonus just for meeting a small minimum spending requirement within the first 90 days of card ownership.

• Related: Chase Freedom Unlimited Review

A few more details to consider:

Chase Freedom Unlimited℠

Highlights:

Credit Card Directory

If you want to explore more cash back options, including additional cards that earn a flat rate of 1.5% back or more, check out our credit card directory below.

Sort By:

Common Filters:

Search

The post Two Rewards Cards Every Amazon Prime Member Needs appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

Source The Simple Dollar The Simple Dollar http://ift.tt/1tj31hC

This Dad Lost His Job… And We Love How His Family Reacted

I was bustling around the house, getting ready to fix breakfast one morning when my husband walked in the door. He’d left for work four hours earlier, and I didn’t expect him home for another five.  

My husband got right to the point: “They let me go.”

He was the manager of a commercial tire retreading plant. Sales had been down for about six months, and the plant hadn’t had enough tires to do its job.

The news wasn’t completely unexpected, but I still felt as if someone had punched me in the stomach.

He had been employed for nearly 17 years in the commercial tire industry, except for a three-year period when he ran his own business. He’d steadily climbed the corporate ladder into a management position.

Suddenly, it felt like he had been pushed off the ladder and hit the bottom with a resounding thud.

We found a few surprising things as we started on the long road back to employment. Here’s a guide to navigating the first month after you receive the news of a job loss.

1. Take Some Time to Grieve

My husband lost his mother less than nine months before he lost his job.

In many ways, the grieving process is the same.

We still work through some of the same stages, such as shock, anger, denial and depression. However, the acceptance stage comes with time, just as it has with the loss of his mother.

The first day after he lost his job, we spent a lot of time just holding one another without speaking.

2. Support Your Spouse

During times of stress, it’s easy to turn on those you love the most.

Our household routine was upset, and all kinds of emotions boiled under the surface.

We knew it was important to support each other’s feelings. I had to respect when he felt depressed and inadequate while assuring him his worth to us had not changed at all.

He also had to respect my schedule and career and step into roles he’d never filled.

We made the decision to get through this together.

3. Evaluate Your Financial Situation

One of the first things my husband did was file for unemployment.

In our state, the process was frustrating and convoluted. Unemployment is something his company paid into, so my husband felt perfectly justified in claiming it while searching for his next job.

Since his job loss wasn’t a performance issue, his last paycheck also included several weeks of severance and vacation pay.

While the idea of not having a paycheck after a few more weeks was still unsettling, we found the situation wasn’t as bleak as we first feared.

Thankfully, we were more prepared than we initially thought. We had no debt besides our house, and were sticking to a reasonable budget plan.

We’ve always felt we have a duty to give back first, so our budget included giving 10% off the top to our church and local charities.

We prefer things simple, so we had our house payment, utilities and insurance all in one category dubbed “bills” — 42% of our weekly income.

We then budgeted about 12% for groceries and 7% for gas and car maintenance.  

We had saved close to 15% each week, so we had enough to cover basic living expenses for a few months. After accumulating our $1,000 emergency fund, this percentage just went into a general savings account. Before the job loss, we used it for large purchases, such as our minivan, bulk food purchases, vacations, gifts and our kids’ school curriculum, as well as unexpected large expenses.

The other 14% of our budget had gone toward miscellaneous purchases and fun money for my husband and me. We didn’t completely eliminate this category, but we brought it to a minimum.

My income was irregular, so we didn’t have a strict budget for it. We used it to add to our miscellaneous budget for things we wouldn’t normally buy and for the kids’ allowance money.

4. Be Honest, But Positive, When Telling Your Children

We have four children in kindergarten through eighth grade.

They’re home-schooled, so they had front row seats to the drama playing out when their dad came home before breakfast one morning. They knew their father lost his job, and I’m sure they felt some of our fear and uncertainty.

We spoke to them honestly about it, letting them know that his company couldn’t afford to pay him anymore. We didn’t try to hide our fear, but we approached it as an adventure we would weather together.

We just added four more members to our team.

The younger kids drew pictures of how their dad would look when he got his new job. The older ones wrote him notes about how they loved him just the same whether he had a job or not.

Without giving specific amounts, we spoke with our oldest about how we had enough savings to last us for a few months until dad got a new job.

5. Contact Your Network

My husband has always been a great employee and built relationships with a network of people during his career.

The first week he was unemployed, his job search mainly involved calling his network. It was amazing how many people were prepared to make contacts for him and pass along opportunities and ideas.  

The job offers he received generally paid much less than his former job or required relocating — both of which threatened to drastically change our lifestyle.

The savings cushion we’d created bought us a little time, so we decided to explore other options.

6. Create Multiple Streams of Income

Losing our primary source of income caused us to reevaluate “putting all our eggs into one basket,” as the old adage states.

As the primary caregiver and educator of our children, I was already working in a variety of part-time ventures from home.

At the time of the job loss, I was teaching piano lessons and occasionally freelance writing. I added in some virtual assistant work and started researching how to expand the businesses I already had.

In the meantime, my husband began working a side job with a lawn care company and doing some of his own research into other side ventures.

We understand these income sources are less steady than a full-time job, and his lawn care job is seasonal. However, with both of us working together in multiple ventures, we are able to average the same amount he was making on a weekly basis.

Where We’ll Go From Here

Our future is still a bit uncertain. My husband continues to submit applications and he answers phone calls a little more quickly than before.

However, having the right attitude during the first month of being unemployed has opened a world of opportunities to us.

We’ve learned so much about ourselves, our talents and our work. Maybe we’re finally employed in things that really matter.

Your Turn: Have you weathered a job loss in your family? What are your tips for getting through it?

Jennifer L. Self is passionate about living well at home. When she’s not spending time with her family, she writes to simplify and enrich life for the work-at-home, homeschooling mom.

The post This Dad Lost His Job… And We Love How His Family Reacted appeared first on The Penny Hoarder.

source The Penny Hoarder http://ift.tt/28rQ31F