Last Friday, I got my last paycheck for the foreseeable future (though, fingers crossed, I am one of like eight million candidates for another academic position at another school at the moment).

I know I’m incredibly lucky. I have literally been overwhelmed at how lucky I am that this spring was my first semester ever teaching and it happened when any other contract I would’ve been on would’ve been cut short in March.

But by April, I could see the writing on the wall for all newly hired faculty positions thanks to the COVID budget cuts and I started battening down the hatches.

And your on my blog, which, as always, is the story of my financial journey, so here’s where we’re at with it.

I had been putting a large portion of my paychecks into my brokerage account as stocks plummeted, but I decided that really wasn’t the best approach anymore as I considered a few things:

• If I can’t land another academic job, I won’t be working anywhere with a substantial paycheck for (I mean, total guess and all, but I’m thinking) about a year.
• The more I save, the more freedom I have in choosing what I’m going to do over the next year. Will I have to go work at Starbucks? Or can I mix savings and side hustle jobs like transcription and the blog together enough to get through?
• I cannot afford to live where I currently live without a job. If I had managed to get a mortgage and knock my living expenses down about 500-600 a month, I still would’ve felt ok about riding out a year in that pay scale, but the current rent is a big nope.

And if you’ve been following the journey of the last seven years, you probably know a few key things.

My emergency savings account is in good shape. I’m kind of insane about that account, because for me, the comfort of it’s existence was worth every crappy, Ramen-eating, no spend week I did in my late 20s to get that sucker up to $10,000.

And you can laugh and be like “a no spend week doesn’t do anything” but the vast majority of that $10,000 was literally nickels and dimes, no spend weeks and mystery shopping, over like 5 years.

Though when you’re staring down the barrel of a year of possible un/under-employement, $10,000 doesn’t seem like so much anymore.

And, of course, sometimes I wonder if we’re staring down the barrel of the next Great Depression and start to laugh hopelessly at how pointless all my money moves will seem in that scenario. But I don’t have a crystal ball and things will be what they will be.

So step one of the battening was to cut what I’d been putting in the brokerage account each paycheck in half and put 50% in there and 50% into the emergency savings account.

Step two of battening down the hatches was some really boring, very practical steps.

Does my website look up to date?

Is my resume updated?

Let me make sure my super rarely used Muggle resume is also up to date.

Let me do a little research on flexible work from home jobs, to see where my skills might fit.

And also, my favorite, figuring out how much money I absolutely have to make each month to not even touch my savings and what can I do to lower that amount?

This takes me to battening step three, which I’m not thrilled about, but am grateful for, while the someone please give me a mortgage hunt continues (at a turtle crawl pace right now though due to seeing if a miracle happens and I beat out the other 7,999,999 people for that academic job and have to move to upstate New York), I am moving back in with my dad.

I luckily only had a six month lease on my apartment here in South Jersey, as I had intended to buy a house. Since it’s up next week, I will be moving back in with my dad. I think it’s the first time I’ve ever moved home because a plan has failed and I’m loving that total loser feeling that I feel very deeply in the moment about the whole thing (even though that’s not accurate and I would not feel that way about anyone else doing the same thing).

But financially, it’s definitely the best choice. Flexibility wise, while I figure out what’s going on and where I’m going to work and what I’m going to do, it’s the best choice.

Also, how many more times am I probably going to do this in my life? I don’t think many. I’m very committed to actually buying a house and making my own home, even though I hope to continue touring when the world rights itself.

So I’m going to get over my stupid ego, happily save some money, and enjoy time at home with my dad and the dog, because how many more weeks or months of my life will be like that?

Or I’m going to try. Because I can be a moody punk sometimes. Especially when I’m channeling my inner angsty teenager in my angsty teenage bedroom.

So I guess we’ll see how far this ship can sail like this? I’ll report back in if we made to shore or sunk when I get my first paycheck from my next full time academic or theater job.