Thursday, January 1, 2009

Uncertain Times

There's no better time than right after moving into a new house to worry about a job loss, eh? Right after I posted the "Stuff" blog, well, a few days, we went and bought a new TV. Right after that, Philip got his hours slashed at work. Great timing on our part.

He's really needed to find a new job for years but hasn't really wanted to put the effort into not just finding the job, but working his way up somewhere again. I can understand that in a way, although if it were me, the no raise for 4 years would have prompted me to get off my butt a little sooner. Now he's working in retail at a time when the forecasts for retailers (and everything else in the global economy) is all gloom and doom. I just read a report on CNN today expecting thousands of stores to go out of business in the first half of 2009. Yippee!

Part of me thinks that slashing his hours is better than losing his job totally, and this is supposed to be temporary. But the realistic part of me says that if things haven't improved by March, then he could still lose his job....only by then our savings is wiped out.

But for now I'm looking on the bright side. He'll be home a little more to get some of the new house stuff accomplished. He still has a job. And his store might even do better than most considering it's a discount retailer...people will shop there when they are tightening their budgets. And lord knows our budget needs some tightening anyway. We waste a lot of money that we could be saving. This will be a good lesson for us (hopefully in the short term) with long term benefits.