Temporary Ways to Survive a Job Loss

The following are not necessarily good ideas for financial benefit, but they have been used to get through tough financial times by those who have been through them.
Cut and sell firewood (if you are handy with a chain saw).
Collect and sell aluminum cans.
Sell junk automobiles for parts or scrap metal.
Tear down old buildings for materials and sell materials as “recycled” or “reusable.” Note: Old barn wood is often used for picture frames; Old brick for brick decorating or landscaping.
Buy coveralls and paintbrush and ladder and start door to door solicitation to paint by the room for a certain price plus cost of paint. This works only if you are neat and don’t make a mess.
Empty your piggy banks. Look for “wheat pennies”, “WWII silver nickels” and old coins that can be sold to coin shops or collectors.
Sell slightly used but outgrown or never used clothes to consignment shop or slightly used clothing store.
Eat beans and rice often. In some countries a big bag of beans or rice is regarded as a guarantee against hunger. Learn how to slow cook them for best effect and taste.
Sell any extra vehicles you own, including dirt bikes, motorcycles, tricycles, and those that aren’t essential as alternative transportation.
Dispense with the cable and pawn the TV.
Go to the library and use online resources there if you can’t afford internet service. Contact government job services agencies. Work for temp firm.
Use library as source for movies, dvd and VCR tapes, books and magazines.
Borrow against your paid up whole life insurance policy (if you are young and healthy)
Sell your blood or plasma via donation sites that pay.
Sell your coin collection, stamp collection, or antiques.
Borrow from your retirement funds (last resort choice)
Withdraw early from retirement funds (worst choice due to tax penalties)
Buy “day old bread” and freeze it and take out enough for each day.
Eat eggs, cheap and easily digested protein. Good fried, boiled, scrambled, deviled, poached mixed with mayo to make egg sandwiches or with a dab of milk in French toast. Not great for low cholesterol dieters.
Use your work skills and talents in creative ways to earn income.
Crafters can make items to sell, seamstresses can alter clothing or make sellable piece work.
Boil peanuts and sell them by the roadside.
Open a lemonade stand.
Dress as clown and Sell balloons.
Offer services for pay: mowing lawns, raking leaves, tilling garden spots, spreading mulch, buying groceries, running errands, etc.
Tithe anyway. (a tenth of nothing is nothing, but if you can’t live off 90% of your earnings, you won’t be able to live off 100% of your earnings either.)
Go to church. Most don’t charge admission.
Pray. Ask. Seek. Share with friends and family your needs and ask for help in locating new job possibilities. The more eyes and ears looking, the better.
And as Winston Churchill said, “And never, never, never, never, never give up.”

Opportunity Preparedness

A friend recently wrote of the need to consider disaster preparedness a sound candidate for new government stimulus spending. From the run toward disasters that we seem to be making in recent years, that certainly sounds reasonable. At the same time, I would counter that proposal with yet another consideration. Could we not also prepare for opportunities?

It seems natural to consider the “fearsomeness” of being unprepared for life’s storms. I also wonder if equally significant is our lack of preparation in relating appropriately to life’s blessings.

Consider just a few:
In light of our religious liberty, how is it that numbers indicate religious engagement may be waning and many denominations report decline? Does freedom to worship mitigate against our preparation to actually be involved in those practices? Or perhaps we have simply forgotten to prioritize in light of such a freedom.

In government, we have adopted an agenda to resolve our pressing problems. Could we not also reasonably engage in those preparations that would allow for mutual benefit and progress? Consider the areas of research and development: corporations and universities on many fronts are diminishing and extinguishing these areas of effort in light of economic downturns. Yet where will we discover new opportunities for economic expansion and new product or services development? In the face of economic depression we should “double down” on research and development efforts in order to stimulate the very progress we seek with sound science, sound technology, and sound humanitarian efforts toward improvements.

In the midst of ethical challenges, is it not reasonable to regain our moral footing with the kind of intentional attentiveness to instruction and learning offered in the context of Christian community? Where better to discover the basis for the most effective and complementary work of relating positively to one another, than in the teachings of Jesus? Whether it stimulates our economy or not, the Ten Commandments, the golden rule, and the call to love our God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength will give moral fiber to the personal and collective experiences of those who willingly engage in such discussions, actions and aims.

In a nation with a quickly escalating aging population, it would seem prudent to consider the means by which productive senior living can be enhanced, along with a clear consideration for quality of life considerations. We are at a place where our technology can outperform our ability to exercise human sensitivity and love. In matters of aging, we have an opportunity to demonstrate the highest forms of care in the midst of a spirit of careful restraint in the use of extraordinarily inhumane practices that may extend heart beats, but ultimately disregard human capacities for interaction, relationship and life quality with family, friends and loved ones. We have an opportunity to change the way we dispense care, and instead consider these persons of great worth, not pursuing a tactical goal of wholesaling housing provisions and health care procedures at the expense of joy, life, and engagement.

Opportunity preparedness -- that is the need before us. It has the potential to mean the “exercise of love” in the kinds of ways that redefine the future for all of us.

I Miss Uncle Bob

As is sometimes the case with ex-relatives, you lose touch with some people that at one time you were really close to. My cousin related the events surrounding her dad’s illness and final months. I didn’t even know until he was gone. I still have the penny coin book he gave me when I first began a coin collection at the age of 7. I still remember his oil paintings of landscapes hanging on his bedroom wall, and they weren’t paint by number. I remember he was a mailman for a long time. I remember he let me and my cousins stay up late and eat pizza. Good memories. At the same time, I realize that there are many reasons why we become disconnected; distance, time, separation, family breakups, but none of the reasons seem very appropriate when we think about all that we miss when those distances and separations and losses accumulate.
One of the great tragedies of our time is the degree to which we are disconnected. We find people attending the same church, sitting just feet apart week after week who do not find within themselves the freedom or initiative to introduce themselves or to welcome another in a way that allows them to share who they are. Being together in the same places is not community. It is shared space. Until we communicate our hearts, thoughts, ideas, dreams, hopes, prayers, expectations, fears, challenges, strengths, weaknesses, failures, successes, and whatever else is possible to relate, we remain strangers in the same room.
A great need today is for human to human sharing. It starts with personal openness about life and living. It can begin in saying please…or thank you, in opening a door, allowing for a greeting and exchange of courtesies, but then it can and should be so much more. Shared meals, shared hearts, shared lives…it marks the community of believers…known by their love for one another…at least that is what Jesus said should describe us best.