It's not news to anyone that we are in an economic crisis of sorts.  We could put the blame on all sorts of people, but I'm not here to talk about that.  I'm wondering what everyone is doing in the midst of the crisis.  Matt and I have been going through our own economic crisis for, um, at least 4 or 5 months at this point.  Last year we were doing ok.  We were newly married and saved all of the money we got from our wedding.  By December, we both received really big bonuses, which we used to create an emergency fund and pay off one student loan.  Things were going well.  We decided we wanted to tithe on gross, not net, income.  We decided from the outset that we wanted to live debt free. This was no walk in the park as we both had over $100,000 in student loans. But no other debt at all. 

So in November of last year we set up a budget on google documents, and we'd write down everything we purchased.  We still do this every month, adding extra sheets as we go.  Our desire was to pay an extra $1000 a month on our loans. We had a 4 month emergency fund, extra $1000 cash emergency fund, and semi-regular spending habits. We started to cut out a lot of things - eating out, movies, etc.  We tried to drive an extra 1000 miles on our cars before the next oil change. Haircuts less often.  Less expensive gifts. No new clothing.  Etc.  But each month something would go wrong.  In January it was Matt's tires -- that's an extra $700.  In March it was a new clutch -- $1050. In April we found out that Matt was going to need extensive dental work -- which would cost more than $2000 out of pocket.  In May Matt was in a wedding that cost us quite a bit in tux rental, gas, two nights at a hotel, and general travel expenses.  Then at the end of May Matt tore his ACL.  Surgery and physical theraphy and regular doctor's visits have cost us upwards of $3000 throughout June, July, and August.  In August I totalled my car and we had to get a new (used) one. Then in September we found out the tires on the new car were more than worn through and we needed to replace them.  Add another $650 for that.  Pluse $200 for dental work (on me this time).  Thankfully the new catalytic converter was still under warranty.  We finally got to the point where we couldn't cover monthly expenses and we completely depleted our emergency fund (it's almost halfway back up right now).  We both work at places that are laying people off right now.  And I'm now the second-to-last person hired.  We won't receive any bonuses or raises, but we might get pay cuts.

Anyway, it's been a tough year for us.  I think we fell on some awful luck, and unfortunately depleted our emergency fund when it was needed most.  So what have we done during these tough economic times?  It's hard because we actually budget.  And we really do limit our spending.  But we aren't doing significantly worse than everyone else. We don't have a house that we might lose.  We don't have cancer or another life-threatening disease.  We aren't the ones who are dependent on others' contributions to charity. 

Nope. We're not doing bad.  But we aren't exactly staying afloat.  We do, however, work two jobs. Actually, I work three.  Matt works nights right now -- 7 PM to aboug 4 or 5 AM.  During the day he is training to be a housing inspector.  It doesn't pay, yet, but if he loses his job, he has an option to fall back on.  And when he's trained, he'll be paid!  I make some money with my photography business, and I clean offices at night. I've started to make up for Matt's shift, so on Wednesday, I cleaned from 6 to 12:30 -- not always a great schedule if you have to get up at 6 AM the next day.  We're still waiting on our paychecks (they'll be coming once a month), but it's one of the ways we can help our budget out.  It's amazing how just $100 or $200 can make a huge difference.

So while we had our own economic crisis while the US and the world were having ecomonic crisis, we tried to make our own luck by working 2 jobs.  What have you done since the economic crisis?