Funding My Unemployment

More easy listening.

Deciding to take a few months off work takes some planning, and some foresight. Which means before I resigned I probably should have ran some numbers to see if I had the funds to pull it off. Better late than never, I suppose. My objective is to determine my allowable discretionary cash burn rate.

·         I know how much I’m going to have to pay for my cell phone and car insurance.

·         My parents say I have to get health insurance so I've gotten pricing just for some basic high-deductible catastrophic insurance.

·         I've roughly mapped out road trips so I can calculate my gas.

·         I've gotten a sublet in Ann Arbor which will be $320 a month, and I’m going to pay my roommate here $50 a month to store my stuff. I’m not quite sure what I’ll do for September and October. Since I’ll be in Europe for a portion of September I might bum around that month. Hopefully by October I’ll be starting a new job, but right now it is kind of a guess.

·         I've factored in lodging for campgrounds and $1,500 for a trip to Europe. That would be more but I’m getting free flights to and from the continent.

So I subtracted all that from my starting funds, and found out how much is left and then divided that evenly over the 6 months to determine how much I discretionary spending I will have.  It worked out to $900 a month or $30 a day for food, drink and necessities. Luckily from my college days I’ve found out that $20 split between Taco Bell and Malt Liquor can go a long way, leaving $10 a day for toilet paper from all that Taco Bell and Malt Liquor.

I know what you’re thinking. What happens at the end of October when you have no money? The story there is that my starting amount is just what I budgeted for this endeavor. I have a reserve fund that could last me another 6 months without a job, but by that point I would probably find something to do even if it was menial. Otherwise I can use my reserve fund to set up in a new city once I figure out what I want to do.