Help, lost 70% household income!

[Looklikepob]

Feeling in shock at the moment. DH has lost his job. I'm on Mat Leave. When I return to work, I have to stay with my company for almost a year according to the contract. I already applied for part time (before the job loss) and they won't let me change this. I'm also not allowed to take a second job.

I feel quite scared and can't quite believe that we went from being quite comfortable last year to really struggling this year!

Advice/ support appreciated.

He needs to take another job

Also talk to utility companies. Most companies prefer managed smaller payments rather than someone racking up unsupportable bad debt.

Lord above.

Good advice upthread, OP. Horrible situation but you’ll get through it. Crossing fingers it’ll be soon.

I already applied for part time (before the job loss) and they won't let me change this. I'm also not allowed to take a second job.

I can understand if a 2nd job was a conflict of interest, it wouldn't be allowed. But why the absolute NO other job if you are part time? What if you picked up a 2nd job 1-2 evenings/nights in a different sector? Stacking shelves or anything else?
I do hope DH finds something soon, but I'd be querying your companies 'no 2nd job to part- timers policy). Do you have have a union?

Oh thank goodness you came along with this advice! Why didn’t we all think of that! 🙄

It's a very scary time, but it will be OK.

Dh and I both lost our jobs in the same week once, different companies, where we'd been for 15 and 23 years.

Because I'm someone who needs to feel I've "done" something the first thing I did was a full financial review and cancel all the unecessary DDs and subscriptions, make sure I was getting the best rates for utilities etc. There's a template for it on Money Saving Expert. It was obviously never going to solve the problem, but it was a worthwhile exercise we still benefit from now. It also showed me how much of what we spend is on stuff we don't really need and how little we could get by on if we had to!

Then I had a good clear out and sold loads of stuff on Ebay. It's amazing the rubbish people will pay good money for! I made a lot of money from very ordinary shoes, for example.

Meanwhile, DH was treating finding a new job as full time work and I negotiated a secondment which meant I could stay on an extra year.

It was a horrible time, but in the end, we both ended up with better jobs and better work life balance and a clearer view of what we wanted from life/which simple pleasures were most important to us.

There is work out there. I recruit executives and we don't get loads of quality applications. At the other end, DS is recruiting retail staff and that's a struggle too. Good luck!

Which sector is he in op?