How To Budget Between Jobs Benefits

Being out of work is scary, regardless of whether you’ve been unemployed for a long time or have just recently fallen into redundancy. Not only do you have  to worry about finding your next position, which can be very stressful by itself, but you also have to worry about your monetary situation throughout the period between employment. 

To take some of the stress away during this horrible time, we’ve put together this short how-to guide on budgeting between jobs. 

Take Assessment of Your Needs

To start with, you should  make an assessment of your outgoings for the average month or so. You don’t have to do this for the entire month, but considering that most people tend to be paid once a month, a month is a good period to budget for. 

There are a couple of ways you can do this. By far, the best way t do it will be via a spreadsheet program, like Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets, but if you’d prefer to make a list the old fashioned way then there’s nothing wrong with that. 

During this assessment, you should make a note of every bill you have to pay or that might come up during the month. Make sure you include all housing costs, as well as commuting and shopping expenses, as the more thorough you are the easier the next step will be. 

Pause Your Extra Payments

In the next step, you should go through your budget and look out for any unnecessary expenses. These are payments which you normally do need, such as the cost of commuting into work or the cost of buying lunch, but don’t at the moment because you’re unemployed.

Once you’ve worked out which of your expenses are ‘extra payments’ you should pause these payments. This will lower the total cost of your budget, allowing you to spend  less money while you look for your next  position.  

As part of this, you should also make sure to downsize your current expenses where possible.  This could mean many different things for many people. For example, you might want to switch from one supermarket  to another, cheaper one. Or you might start cycling as opposed to taking your car. 

There are no hard and fast rules when it comes to extra payments or downsizing. The important thing is to be honest with your needs and what you can actually afford. 

Cut Any Unnecessary Expenses

Your next step should be to look out for  any unnecessary expenses — magazine subscriptions, extraneous streaming services, and other such payments — and make a note of them. Once you’ve created a list of these unnecessary payments, you should cancel or cut off these unnecessary payments. 

Cutting your unnecessary expenses is a great way of managing your budget, regardless of whether you’re in employment or not. By cutting these expenses now, you’ll be in a better financial position once you’re back in employment. 

Look At Sources of Income

During this time,  as well as managing your existing savings, its also important to make sure that you build up other sources of income while you work out what you’re going to do next. Depending on your circumstances, there are several ways of doing this. 

For many people, this will be by claiming welfare benefits and  financial support benefits while you  look for work. Alternatively, you could look for an alternative source of income, such as temporary or seasonal work.

Moving Forward

Once you have a budget worked out, it’s time to concentrate on looking for your new job. As long as you follow your budget as close as possible and remember to adjust it as necessary, you shouldn’t have to worry about it any further. 

Contact Building Better Opportunities Today

Based in Stoke-On-Trent, we Building better Opportunities  offer welfare advice and employment support to people in the local community seeking to get back into employment. We offer a free and confidential advice service on topics such as advice on claiming benefits, working with a health  condition, and how to navigate universal credit. 

For more information, get in touch with Building Better Opportunities today.