July: how has your income been affected?

[aksinger]

March was super stressful, probably the most stressed about our financial situation that we’ve ever been. We thought we were going to lose both of our jobs, but fortunately that didn’t happen. I own a small business where I teach private music lessons, in March I went 100% online and lost 35% of my clients through the end of May. My summer months are normally slower, but I’m only down 20% of where I normally am for summer income, and I’m 75% online and 25% in-person. I anticipate being part online/part in-person until we get a vaccine and that will keep my numbers down, most likely a loss of 20% overall.

I didn’t apply for any of the fed small business loans, but I did apply for the pandemic unemployment when it became available for people in the gig economy and have received enough in that to compensate for my lost income so far. I also applied for and received a pandemic small business grant our city offered, and have decided to put that back into other small business in town through utilizing their businesses.

DH’s job went from hourly wages with a good amount of overtime and solid work hours to salary with no overtime and fluctuating work hours (basically on-call 24/7, even his scheduled days off). However, his new salary is high enough that it covers what his normal base hours plus some overtime would be. It is stressful with him basically being on-call all the time, but we’re thankful he still has a solid income. We really tightened the belt on spending March-May and were able to up our liquid savings to a 3-month e-fund and even add to my ROTH-IRA, I’ve lapsed a little in June/July and have been spending more on frivolous things and updates to the house. ETA: our dog just got injured, torn ACL. $3300 surgery scheduled for next week. There goes my good progress with our e-fund. Yay.

[shaynaatl]

We've been on a mini-roller coaster. DH got laid off from his consultant project at the start of Covid. The timing was actually ok as I became super busy at work and he was able to watch the kids all day.

Last month he interviewed twice for a new job that seemed like a potential winner. Unfortunately they told him this week that the position has been put on hold. But on the same day, his previous company asked if he wants to do the consultant project again. It's only part-time but it pays well and will give us flexibility with the kids. And we can restart our house hunt (had put that on hold after he lost his income).

[wanderingback]

Jul 8, 2020 19:30:06 GMT -5 mofongo said:

Only here would almost 70% of voters have stayed the same or increased/expect an increase.

Yeah I feel like everyone that I’m close with either got furloughed, laid off, reduced salary or lost their work due to the nature of their careers. Definitely completely different than around here.
My dad got laid off but luckily got another job that he says he’ll enjoy fairly quickly. At least 1 success story!

[juliej]

I'm self-employed and my client work has been steady - steady enough we felt confident in me starting a second business (with no expectation of immediate profit; it's the thing I want to transition to doing long term).

My husband was moved up a "band" at his very corporate work environment (he's always worked in start-ups and his current job was a result of the start-up he worked for getting bought last year); it won't immediately affect his income because that raise happened in February, but his expected annual bonus went from 12% to 20%.