NT's work won't meet the necessary profit margin in May, so there will definitely be 10 days of furlough. (If I understand the e-mail he sent me, higher-up employees just have to take temporary pay cuts, so they don't get the days off to go with the lost wages. I count NT lucky then!)
Two weeks' lost wages is about equal to $1232 net. (It will probably be a slightly smaller loss than that, net, because they'll withhold slightly less taxes.) So we're cutting $400 of discretionary spending and the remaining $832 or so I'll siphon from what we would be saving for the EF.
No word on furloughs or layoffs at my job so far; fingers crossed.
I've actually been pondering what to do with some PTO days I have that I won't need for our summer vacation; now I've decided to take them on some of NT's furlough days. His company is having everyone take off Thursday July 2 and every Friday from July 10 to Sept. 4. It's actually the most pleasant way to do furloughs, if you have to have them! So I'll give myself several three-day weekends this summer, and get to spend them with NT and hopefully AS.
AS has decided to start applying for jobs again, while still trying to build her sewing business. She thinks in this crunch time, if she could find a job, we'd be a lot better off. The sewing business could be viable, we all believe, but it will build slowly as clientele and word-of-mouth do, and as she starts to develop a product line for an online store. So she's going to keep regular employment an option by applying for jobs in the meantime.
If she does get a job, she'll still be able to work on sewing, just not as much, so in that case she would focus more on the designing and production of original clothing rather than the piecework that's currently her main source of income (besides unemployment compensation).
It's a confusing time, and a confusing situation to be in, so I won't be surprised if there's some going back and forth and changes of heart along the way, but some great-sounding job opportunities opened up recently and I think that's what swayed her toward applying again (and I think my frustration at paying the minimum on debt is rubbing off as well, though I didn't want it to).
Furlough is confirmed
May 19th, 2009 at 05:45 pm
May 19th, 2009 at 07:12 pm 1242760342
My best to AS... does she have or plan to have a website to market her original creations? In the meanwhile, a job would allow some breathing room in these tough times.
May 19th, 2009 at 08:54 pm 1242766459
I think AS is going to sell on Etsy, but she also bought up the domain name that matches her business name. She may end up showcasing her stuff there and directing people to Etsy, but I'm not sure what the exact plan is. She's still in the stage of conceptualizing her product line.