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

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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?

Surely a TV licence is cheaper than subscription services?

Could you rent a room out?

50 minutes? That’s a long walk.

Contractor work is better than nothing and can be well paid.

I would cut the elderly cat insurance and the kids expensive hobbies. Also everything under the heading that totalled £431.

How big is your house? Your energy costs are HUGE!

If you have a mortgage you can ask for a 6 month break and pay interest only.

Try not to panic, if he’s got an interview next week it suggests he is likely to get more and will probably land a job within 6 months.

If he is getting 6 months salary as redundancy, (i beleive) this should be tax free, which will give you a bigger cushion. I agree with all the comments on cutting back but please don't lose hope, your husband has niche skills and i hope everything works out.

Has anyone said about Monzo and pots? Work out your budgets from essentials first down to luxury and put each thing in a dedicated pot.

I have recently set up a spreadsheet of everything in and out of every single account. Grouped all by food petrol treats bills etc then add them up and analyse it all.

Meal plan with what food you already have in the freezer. Delay the car service. Really there are a lot of things you can bend to save money that you can reinvest when money starts flowing again. So no clothes at all unless it's really needed for school. Second hand school uniform. Eat everything and only replace went there's none of it left.

Start with the spreadsheet. If anything it will inspire you to spend less as putting multiple rows per day in a real pita

When I was having to rehome our pets (including our much-loved family dog) and sell up (our much-loved family home), I was numb from depression and stuck firmly in 'fight or flight' - only now do I feel the awfulness of it. We are now back on our feet, but my husband and I never got another pet because we know we're just a few instances of bad luck away from it all happening again. We've learnt that pets are an absolute luxury.

My children have quite a few tutors on an alternate week arrangement now. Some of the tutors were reluctant to begin with but have no discovered it works well

At child speed. It's 40 or less at adult speed but that's why we drive them!

There is a great deal you can watch on YouTube and other free to use platforms. Older films via platforms such as Curzon Home Cinema for a nominal fee if you want one say once or twice a month.

B & Q prefer to employ older workers.

Yes, but less to watch and less for the children.

Everyone saying get a minimum wage job like that's going to be easier than getting a similar job in a similar industry at a similar level. At this point in time he needs to stay positive and focus on doing everything he can to land a similar or better role than he had before. It is possible! Yes the job market is dire, but there are still jobs and someone gets offered them!

Yes you can look at getting a minimum wage in a few months if he hasn't made any progress, but I think it's too early for that. How can you have time to apply and interview for jobs if you're woking 40 hours a week in Tesco? (Assuming they'd actually hire him)

You sit down and go through everything. And I mean EVERYTHING! And then you work through your week and see where you can make changes - if you drive to school, can you walk? If you normally shop in Sainsbury’s, can you go to Aldi? If trips to the park involve an ice cream, call in at the supermarket on the way home and buy a box of them. Think about any plans you already have in the diary or the DC’s birthdays and how you can strip those back. But also don’t cut your nose off to spite your face - we reduced the hours of childcare but didn’t cancel it completely as then we would have had to go back on the waitlist which wouldn’t work as we knew we’d need the childcare when DH went back to work. Same with some of the kid’s clubs where DD would be missing the exam term and so wouldn’t have been able to progress and would have ended up out of sync with her peers. So the plan for the first few months whilst we had the redundancy money was to cut back where we could whilst making non-permanent changes. Then we had a plan for the 5 month mark anticipating running out of redundancy money and moving to having to supplement our expenditure with savings. That would have involved completely cancelling childcare, clubs and those sorts of things.

Lots of people have raised this so for everyone, my wording was deliberate:

"equivalent to 6 months take home salary."

People seem to have read this as it being 6 months salary but it isn't. The amount he will get in the bank is 6.1 months take home salary. Yes the amount he gets up to £30k is tax free but the amount he'll be paid is equivalent to 6 months salary.

You could ask your energy company to go to variable direct debit instead of fixed. It will cost the same long term but as we’re in summer it means your next few months bills will be lower based on actual usage.

I would cut out the pet insurance: If they are that sick they are rarely going to have a good outcome. Put half the insurance money aside separately. Switch the pets to cheaper (supermarket) food. I know the cats might not accept it but it's worth a try. Dogs will eat most cheaper stuff.

Cut the horse riding and gear, use cheaper supermarket uniform if possible. Your fuel bills are really high: Wear clothes an extra day if possible (not underwear), make towels and sheets last a day or so longer. Only iron the clothes that show, tumble drier only for really wet days/more than 2 days of rain. If you have the oven on fill it, i.e. casserole/baked potatoes/veg in water/puddings/cake can be done all at once in appropriate sized pans (I can do a complete roast plus pudding in oven).

You can't watch them live but you can watch ITVX and Channel 4 & 5 on catch up. No BBC on catch up without a licence.

This happened to us last year. I ended up working full time and getting a promotion, while he has become self employed working 3 days a week. He is much much happier and our earnings are the same. Try not to panic, keep an open mind.

Your children don't need to be stuck in front of a TV for hours. There's lots of other inside/outside stuff. Boredom makes them inventive.

I think it would be very odd if you got ‘flamed’ for your post as you put it, OP. You have done nothing wrong, just finding yourself in a challenge due to unfortunate circumstances. And you are asking for advice, nothing wrong with that.

I don’t have anything to offer in advice other than what others have said, but hope things are looking up for you soon OP.

One thing to plan for the future (and now) is to have a spreadsheet with every single outgoing on it. We even plan for several variable categories by keeping a running total each FY and then adding an average into the family budget on that basis.

Part of the spreadsheet includes a column with our emergency planning and a note of the action we’d take. So I know now, which budget lines get zeroed by cancelling them and which budget lines get cut back as far as possible.

we update this regularly. Keeps me sane!