Preparing for Layoff at T-minus 1 month

In 28 days, my husband will lose his current job. Until he goes back to work, this means some changes for us.

We've been amongst the lucky - with 3 months to prepare, outplacement support, and a significant severance, we've been able to make some plans. And as I've mentioned before, we have the money to go a good long time...so long as we're careful.

I've spent the last couple months stocking our pantry. Over the next few months, we'll be shopping as little as possible, mostly for fresh fruits, vegetables, eggs and milk. Our freezer and pantry are quite full.

Through my sister, I've found a source of bulk foods and other items. We're 'checking it out' this month, with an order of 25 lbs of organic white flour. It's not that much cheaper than the grocery store, but it is, a bit. And we go through a lot of flour in our house. If we like it, we'll get other types of flour as well.

I also went halves on a container of our favorite honey wheat pretzels with my sister, and bought a bunch of the hair conditioner I'm addicted to at about 1/2 the price. The savings mean that these things don't have to be given up right away.

We suspended our wine club - one of our favorite indulgences, and the FIOS package bill is next. They've been escalating the costs lately anyway, so we'll definitely get that down.

We'll be carving down daycare to 3 days a week, 2 of them paid for (my Mom does the 3rd day for us). My husband will be home with my daughter for 2 weekdays. We'd cut it completely, but think that would be a huge disruption for both her and for my sister and her family when he does return to work- my sister is her caregiver the remaining 4 weekdays. This cuts our daycare bill in half.

We came home from a weekend visit to my sister's farm with quite a few seedlings, 4 dozen eggs from her chickens, and some goats milk. The goat's milk has been great in our coffee, and trimmed down our milk costs for a couple weeks. The eggs will last us a couple more weeks - we use a lot of eggs in our house, between baking, the fact that they are my daughter's favorite food, and they make great meals. The garden will start going in next weekend, with the hopes of offsetting some of our food costs...and I love to garden, so it's not a hard thing.

Aside from stocking up and cutting back, we're mostly just holding off on all but a few house projects that are currently underway, and trying to minimize costs on things. It's going to be an interesting journey, but I think we're as ready as we're going to get.