Lost your job? Lose some expenses.

About a month into my job search I found myself sitting across the table from my church leader. My wife was with me and we were asked to meet with him because he was concerned about my unemployment. We had put this meeting off for weeks because we didn't think we'd be out of work very long.

By the time we met with him I had come to terms with the idea that our job search would be long and painful. We didn't need any financial help, yet, but we thought we'd let him know where we were at. One of the first things he did was to ask us what our expenses were. He wanted to understand how many months we could go on with the savings we had.