Husband made redundant and facing £1200 monthly shortfall, any advice?

[Tappings]

I'm probably going to get flamed in this thread judging by how others have gone.

DH has been made redundant, he was the main earner.

We're lucky that he'll get a decent payout, equivalent to 6 months take home salary.

I work 30 hours per week. I got a promotion in February and have a decent take home, above national average.

DH will be entitled to contributions based JSA and we'll get child benefit back, but even with those and cutting back our bills we'll be £1200 short per month. And that doesn't account for any personal spends, kids clothes/ uniform, adult clothes, birthdays etc.

Due to my recent promotion, me getting a better paying job is extremely unlikely, even if I went full time. I'm close to the ceiling of my profession. There's no option to go full time where I am either.

DH is (was) a well paid professional in a competitive field and was quite senior in that field. He's already looking for jobs, has sorted his CV, spoken with several recruiters and has an interview lined up for next week.

Any suggestions on what we can do? Advice/ support?

Not this tax year he hasn’t (I presume!)

For the marriage allowance he has, if its a £12570

September last year, when our household income was £600 less, and our childcare bill £300 higher, we had over £10k in the bank, in addition to the children's junior ISAs (which have £5k each in) and the budget pots, like the christmas one and the children's cash savings.

In September the car pot was emptied when our insurance was due. It was low because it had needed remedial work on the MOT in April. In September the car needed a new exhaust including the catalytic converter. That came out of the savings. A couple of weeks later we broke down - the water pump had gone. Again came from savings. 6 weeks later we were hit by an uninsured driver. We had to pay for taxis and extra trains because we didn't have a car, and our insurance excess (which is usually in the car pot). Eventually we hired a car as a cheaper option. Needed new car seats for the kids as well. We got £850 for the car.

So in November we needed to buy a new (to us car). Options were car finance, loan or use some savings. I had no idea used cars had gone up so much in price! We camp as our main holiday each year and have a trailer, so needed a car suitable to pull that, but still! So we used half of our remaining savings, the money from the insurance and a 0% credit card.

We've been building the savings back up since. Helped significantly by my new job.

But shows how in a 6 week period you can go from £10k+ to £2k in savings.

Yes. You just can't watch any live TV or iplayer.

Has he looked into being a train driver. There are apparently shortages of train and bus driving. I know someone who is now a bus driver and has not been there very long.

Having been through this as I said before my biggest advice is don't panic...yet. If he hasn't found another job in the next ten weeks or so...start panicking then and looking at things. Doing silly things like cancelling all subscriptions will just make you all miserable and save you like 50 pound a month or something plus you will need them if you tighten the going out belt. Realm savings are things like takeaway food, beauty appointments, massages, gym fees etc. That can save you probs 200-500 a month

As I stated, he has 6 months redundancy payments until he can secure another job.

3-6 months bills emergency fund is best practice family budgeting. It’s what’s generally recommended to aim for. But I think in reality the median emergency fund figure is nearer £4000.

@Tappings could he do some freelance work? There are websites where you can sell blocks of your time. By day, hour etc. I did a very quick search and an example is one called Malt.

OP now has a sensible plan - cuts now for non essentials to make the redundancy money go further, plans for further cuts if he isnt getting interviews/ offers in a few months.

OP look at https://www.moneysupermarket.com/breakdown-cover/ as some companies are currently advertising "sales".

You mentioned your terrace was "draughty". If it really is and that was not just a figure of speech then draught excluders (foam strips can be used) are generally the first energy saving thing you should do. Also consider putting bubble wrap on the windows in winter - cheap way to improve heat loss. Go for the larger bubbles. e.g. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Triplast-Large-Bubble-Wrap-Roll/dp/B0G49BF392/ref=ascdfB0G49BF392?mcid=d0f76b16bff339e186ec79494e3c9322&th=1&tag=googshopuk-21&linkCode=df0&hvadid=777593029639&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=2783422315929118469&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9194052&hvtargid=pla-2457797554258&hvocijid=2783422315929118469-B0G49BF392-&hvexpln=0&gadsource=1

Not sure if this has been mentioned yet, but remember that child benefit thresholds are calculated on a tax year basis. So if you reapply to receive it now and by the end of this tax year your husband has found another job and (coupled with what he's earned since April, plus anything taxable from his severance package) reaches the threshold again you'll be liable to pay that all back.

overpaid child benefit can usually be paid back the following year - and if he's in work again then they'll be able to offer a payment plan.

An awful lot of people are able though but choose coffees, nails, subscriptions instead

Easy and cheap credit lulled people into a false sense of security and now the chickens are coming home to roost
Its even termed credit not debt
If you dont have an emergency fund of 3-6 months money stashed then you are a couple of pay checks from disaster.
Ironically Op now has an emergency fund, if her Dh gets work quickly she is sorted

Unfortunately we don't really do stuff like that. No gym, I get my hair cut twice a year (DH more regularly but it's much less), I don't do nails or Botox or anything like that and takeaways are a birthday treat, which is why the supermarket/ food budget is high - we cook and make all meals.

I often see people on social media etc saying they can save £100s a month by cutting that stuff and looking for subscriptions they forgot about but we just don't have that sort of stuff going on.

£1600 is minimum wage so most full time jobs will get you that even a Supermarket or factory one . Hopefully your husband will find a job within 6 months . Maybe give himself a timeline if he does not find anything within his area in 4 months can will get a job simply for the money . My husband moved in with me ( back then was boyfriend) completely moving area and had to find a job suddenly during the covid pandemic , he worked a year for amazon as a delivery driver , he hated it and honestly I hated it too , but paid a wage and it was the only thing available , as soon as opportunity appeared he found a better one .
Good luck to your family , redundancies are not easy

I was taking home at least £1600 when I worked reception in a hotel. So it’s easily doable on even low paid jobs. He may need to be prepared to work unsociable hours and do “grunt work”.

is it 6 months money or equivalent to? It will be tax feee up to £30k (I think it’s still that much), so actually it’s more than the number of months salary.

Whilst waiting for a job in his industry, he should be looking at things like deliveroo, Amazon delivery etc. very flexible in terms of hours.

The amount he'll get paid in to his account will be 6.8 times his take home pay. So we should be able to make it last 9 months without much difficulty and 12 months if we really tighten our belts.

I'm a bit less panicked about stuff now we've made a plan.

Things are always better with a plan

You can cut down to the basic netflix service, I think its only a fiver a month, or you could cancel it if you think its going to be a struggle, and then sign up again when you're bored and just want it for a month.

DH was made redundant from a higher up role in tech last year, unfortunately he quickly became aware of how many adverts are ghost jobs now. It took him a few months, and he had to go in a level lower than he had left, however 2 promotions in 8 months later and he's now in a better role than before so he's glad he took it. I will say the one thing that actually worked for him was face to face contact with former colleagues, one of them hadn't seen his linkedin, knew how good at his role he was, told his CEO and a role was created for him. It's a scary place to be where you are right now, but tech isn't dead, it's just shifting. Make sure all certs are up to date, and talk to the job centre, while DH didn't qualify for any benefits they did pay for him to do some very specific tech courses that a lot of roles seemed to want.