A 30 day deadline until the bank account runs dry, yikes!

Photo courtesy of http://www.sxc.hu.

OK, life's about to get real. Very real.

Four weeks. One month. About 30 days. Is it a long time? A relatively short time? I suppose it depends on how you look at it.

For me and my family. It's short. Agonizingly short. Why? Because it represents the amount of money we have left in the bank that will cover our living expenses for that period of time. In about one month, my severance package will be spent and the outlook for additional money coming in is poor. Wow. That went fast.



It was brutally cold and snowy in January when I was a victim of corporate downsizing. It's May. I'm wearing a sundress sitting on my front porch. It's warm now. Time flies.

Let's think about what one person can do in four weeks, one month or 30 days.

We vacationed in St. John and St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, in February 2012.

We could pack up our bags, forego the bill paying, drain our bank account, and hop a jet to a Caribbean island and spend 30 days basking in the sun and listening to the sound of the waves while eating bananas for every meal and sleeping in a tent. A 30-day vacation would be a long vacation. A long month.

We could eat only fruits and vegetables and rice and lose 10 pounds! Emerson could continue on his diet of milk from his mama and gain two pounds and grow an inch!

Since it takes three weeks to develop a new habit, we could master one new habit and be on our way to the next.

Four weeks translated into grass growing is about four lawn mows.

In the course of one month, we could train for a 5K and then run it.

In 30 days could I land a new job? Go back to work full time? You can do a lot of things in one month, but getting a new job in that amount of time is tough. Aaaargh. Unfortunately my bread and butter freelance client isn't resulting in as many hours as originally planned. I'm still working, but it's not enough to make ends meet. And the rest of my freelance business isn't growing very quickly.

I thought I had some clarity on where my future was going to go. Now I just feel as confused as ever.

Ahhh, what are we going to do? I feel panicky, but I know I'm resourceful. I recently read a blog post that explained that the emergency fund no longer exists and the new emergency fund is a person's ability to make extra money in a short period of time. Now's the time.