laid off? - Page 4

$2400 hit our account this morning and I'm on furlough with a return date of 5/18 but I'm sure that will be extended. Signed up for unemployment yesterday so we will see how it goes. The good thing is my company continues to pay for my benefits for me and my wife.

Originally Posted by kss

Your wife should get that $600 weekly while on unemployment.... at least thats what I heard. so $305/wk from state, $600/wk from the fed, $905/wk

Thanks for the heads up. I thought it was just a one shot deal. That's quite a bit more than we need to get by on.

It appears that the stimulus loan to the company will come through, so chances are that they will put her back on the payroll at some point. That will tame it down some.

Either way ... it looks like we will be okay for the short term. It really is time to start thinking forward to next winter though. There's no way of knowing what the picture might look like. Worst case ... i'm thinking that at least one of us is out of a job with govt. benefits played out. We might have to go it alone for awhile. It might be a good idea to save as much as we can now in case we need it later on.

Originally Posted by hills

Thanks for the heads up. I thought it was just a one shot deal. That's quite a bit more than we need to get by on.

It appears that the stimulus loan to the company will come through, so chances are that they will put her back on the payroll at some point. That will tame it down some.

Either way ... it looks like we will be okay for the short term. It really is time to start thinking forward to next winter though. There's no way of knowing what the picture might look like. Worst case ... i'm thinking that at least one of us is out of a job with govt. benefits played out. We might have to go it alone for awhile. It might be a good idea to save as much as we can now in case we need it later on.

bolstering emergency funds is a great idea.... I always try to keep 6 months of expenses tucked away. Luckily this quarantine hasn't effected my job yet (which is probably 70% of our household income) and seems stable for a while.

Im just waiting for the scrap yard by me to open back up so I can clear out my shred piles and have room to collect stuff again.....

Rural living is a little bit different from life in suburbia. It's closer to nature and living life by the seasons. You work hard to put up whatever supplies you need to carry you through the following winter. My big thing has been putting up enough firewood to keep the house warm throughout the cold season. We have central heat but i much prefer the wood stove. Last time i ran the numbers ... our firewood was less than 20% of the cost of heating with oil. It's just that it's a lot of labor. Others have a garden and home can their own fruits and vegetables at harvest time. Some sustenance hunt for wild game in the fall. One or two deer can keep a family in protein for the winter.

The main thing is that we're less dependent on the cash economy. The urban and suburban folks are vulnerable that way. Heaven help em' if things go sideways. We can do for ourselves if we really need to. I don't know how the city dwellers would get by if they fell on hard times.

The loan went through for the company so we're looking to call our people back from unemployment. The problem is that they can make more on unemployment and are reluctant to return. They company has got to figure out how to finesse this. There may be a bunch of people losing their jobs.

My guess would be that any job will be a precious commodity once we get on the back side of this. If you've got a job now ... you want to protect it at all costs.

Originally Posted by hills

Rural living is a little bit different from life in suburbia. It's closer to nature and living life by the seasons. You work hard to put up whatever supplies you need to carry you through the following winter. My big thing has been putting up enough firewood to keep the house warm throughout the cold season. We have central heat but i much prefer the wood stove. Last time i ran the numbers ... our firewood was less than 20% of the cost of heating with oil. It's just that it's a lot of labor. Others have a garden and home can their own fruits and vegetables at harvest time. Some sustenance hunt for wild game in the fall. One or two deer can keep a family in protein for the winter.

The main thing is that we're less dependent on the cash economy. The urban and suburban folks are vulnerable that way. Heaven help em' if things go sideways. We can do for ourselves if we really need to. I don't know how the city dwellers would get by if they fell on hard times.

The loan went through for the company so we're looking to call our people back from unemployment. The problem is that they can make more on unemployment and are reluctant to return. They company has got to figure out how to finesse this. There may be a bunch of people losing their jobs.

My guess would be that any job will be a precious commodity once we get on the back side of this. If you've got a job now ... you want to protect it at all costs.

"The loan went through for the company so we're looking to call our people back from unemployment. The problem is that they can make more on unemployment and are reluctant to return. They company has got to figure out how to finesse this. There may be a bunch of people losing their jobs."

Yea this is going to be a reality for a ton of people.... why would anyone WANT to work, and but themselves and their family at risk of exposure, when instead they could just not go back to work, and get paid more for doing so.....


"The loan went through for the company so we're looking to call our people back from unemployment."

Yea the key would have been not laying people off at all, cause then you could use the loan for payroll, and get it 100% forgiven, essentially making paying your employees free for you for as much as you take the loan for. Sure people could have quit, but then they would be in-eligible for unemployment of any kind. Anyone that kept their employees on the payroll the whole time essentailly has them trapped because if the employee quits, they get no unemployment.... thats why a ton of employees are begging to get layed off so they can collect more unemployment than they make working, and not have to work and not be exposed to the public.... its a strange predicament.


"We have central heat but i much prefer the wood stove. Last time i ran the numbers ... our firewood was less than 20% of the cost of heating with oil. "

I have oil heat and wood fireplaces. We dont use the fireplace, even though we do have a ton of wood stowed away just incase we would NEED to at some point. Our oil boiler is pretty new and efficient. We only spent about $600 on heating oil (for house heat and hot water), although it was a warm winter this year.



"My guess would be that any job will be a precious commodity once we get on the back side of this. If you've got a job now ... you want to protect it at all costs."


I would think this could or could not end up being true. If everything is allowed to open up, there is going to be a couple months that no one wants to go back to work (due to making more on UI), so job demand will be super high, plus job demand was very high before corona, so we could go back to that once the corona passes.

Originally Posted by kss

She doesn't have the right, but the government does have the right, when it is in the publics best interests. Which is what government at federal,state and local levels have determined is the case here.

You and the lady can both live as you like for sure, but the government can also use it's rights to restrict your rights. Like stay at home orders, curfews, etc.

It is an interesting debate though on how much they can restrict our rights and in which ways. I don't know that I know where the line is, but it definitely interesting to think about. Like.... If they started tracking all people's cell phones to make maps of where they've been to track Corona, I'd say that crosses a line for privacy and rights.... If they make us stay home does that cross a line? If they just ask us to stay home if we can does that cross a line? Who knows....

I was going to cede just because I didn't want the convo to get and more heated, but it would seem that our thought isn't that far apart, we are just attacking opposite sides of the argument. I would sit and drink a beer with you and we could beat the particulars out of this and argue over whether hoppy or sweet beer is more fit to drink.

Originally Posted by t00nces2

I was going to cede just because I didn't want the convo to get and more heated, but it would seem that our thought isn't that far apart, we are just attacking opposite sides of the argument. I would sit and drink a beer with you and we could beat the particulars out of this and argue over whether hoppy or sweet beer is more fit to drink.

Lol, no heat from me! I just like arguing! I'll argue anything from either side!

Additionally, at this time, any beer I can get is fine by me! We could sure debate this topic with beers for a while! (As long as we're 6 ft apart while doing it )

Originally Posted by hills

It's interesting how our response to the Covid-19 is so similar to what our neighbors in the world are doing. We aren't quite as socialized as N.Z. but we're not terribly different. My wife took a voluntary furlough from her job because she is at high risk. She should get about 305.00$/week. Additionally, there's a one time 600.00$ payout which should arrive sometime next week. We each received 1,200.00$ from the IRS this morning. Just landed in our bank accounts.

Our state Governor extended the stay at home order from April 15th. to May 15th. yesterday. We're now up to 734 confirmed cases with the number rising daily. I was talking with someone who works in the healthcare field a couple of weeks ago. The number of cases on our county is fewer than a handful. She explained that the numbers are probably off simply because testing isn't being done. Same/same with deaths because testing kits aren't being provided to the coroners.

It's springtime here and the average daytime temps are about 45 deg. F. The weather has been a bit rough. We had two storms that came through this past week with high winds. Each knocked out power for about a day. Used about 1/2 of the gasoline/petrol in storage to keep the generator running.

I always get a bit melancholy in the fall eesakiwi. It's like the glory days of summer have passed and now we're heading into the hard time of the year. The winter's here are hard enough without piling a pandemic on top of it. It's definitely time for me to get busy prepping for next winter. Gotta get out there and get my butt in gear. My thoughts will be with you guys in the southern hemisphere.

How much gas do you keep on hand and what is your strategy for rotation? I keep 50gallons and turn 10 gallons a month (at least) over. That will last me weeks intermittent run on the generator.

Originally Posted by t00nces2

How much gas do you keep on hand and what is your strategy for rotation? I keep 50gallons and turn 10 gallons a month (at least) over. That will last me weeks intermittent run on the generator.

It varies on how much i keep on hand. Depends partly on the season. Maybe 25 gallons give or take ? I usually use fuel stabilizer so in "theory" it should keep for a year. In practice ... i usually rotate the whole batch out every 2-3 months. I just dump it in our vehicles and then refill the cans.

We were using about 1/2 gallon per hour to run the generator the last couple of storms.

I work at a gas station so 24/7 access to fuel isn't a problem.

There are a couple of things about gasoline to keep in mind. The first is that it's blended for the season so you could run into problems with running a summer blend in the winter and vice versa. The second is that our ethanol blended fuels don't have a long shelf life. The ethanol and gasoline are blended at the tank farm just before being loaded onto the eighteen wheeler delivery truck. Years ago, a sales rep for the company advised us that it should have a stable shelf life of 30 days in the tanks at our gas station. After that ... all bets are off. It can start to undergo phase separation.

I've started moving toward propane as our prime generator fuel this year. Just bought a 100 gallon "pig" and had that filled. Picked up a used home standby unit last month and plan to have that installed & operational by the end of summer. Shelf life isn't a factor with propane.

Originally Posted by kss

"The loan went through for the company so we're looking to call our people back from unemployment. The problem is that they can make more on unemployment and are reluctant to return. They company has got to figure out how to finesse this. There may be a bunch of people losing their jobs."

Yea this is going to be a reality for a ton of people.... why would anyone WANT to work, and but themselves and their family at risk of exposure, when instead they could just not go back to work, and get paid more for doing so.....


"The loan went through for the company so we're looking to call our people back from unemployment."

Yea the key would have been not laying people off at all, cause then you could use the loan for payroll, and get it 100% forgiven, essentially making paying your employees free for you for as much as you take the loan for. Sure people could have quit, but then they would be in-eligible for unemployment of any kind. Anyone that kept their employees on the payroll the whole time essentailly has them trapped because if the employee quits, they get no unemployment.... thats why a ton of employees are begging to get layed off so they can collect more unemployment than they make working, and not have to work and not be exposed to the public.... its a strange predicament.


"We have central heat but i much prefer the wood stove. Last time i ran the numbers ... our firewood was less than 20% of the cost of heating with oil. "

I have oil heat and wood fireplaces. We dont use the fireplace, even though we do have a ton of wood stowed away just incase we would NEED to at some point. Our oil boiler is pretty new and efficient. We only spent about $600 on heating oil (for house heat and hot water), although it was a warm winter this year.



"My guess would be that any job will be a precious commodity once we get on the back side of this. If you've got a job now ... you want to protect it at all costs."


I would think this could or could not end up being true. If everything is allowed to open up, there is going to be a couple months that no one wants to go back to work (due to making more on UI), so job demand will be super high, plus job demand was very high before corona, so we could go back to that once the corona passes.

Well .... the situation is complicated. We're a bit different than other companies because we're employee owned. The main reason we furloughed our our most "at risk" employees was for no other reason than to get them out of harm's way. (We've actually been providing a paycheck to those who have been unable to get unemployment for whatever reason.)

The callback would be reasonable once the state of emergency has been lifted. That's in effect here for at least another month. Again, we're just trying to figure it all out as we go along. I will say that i've been impressed with upper level management. They've really showed their true colors during this event. Judge em' by what they do and you can see that they really care about their people. Now .. we need our employees to show that they really care about their company.

As regards jobs: I'm concerned that there could be a global recession to rival that of The Great Depression of the 1930's. Hope for the best but prepare for the worst if you can. Our "baby boom" generation has no direct experience with this so we don't know what to expect. I have talked with the old timers who lived through those times though. Most of them are dead now but i carry their living memories. Just a couple of excerpts:

Unemployment was very high. In some places you had to have a college degree to get a job at a gas station. It was just an arbitrary way of narrowing down the hundred or so applicants for that one available job.

The government had programs to provide work for people here but it was only four hours per day. ( That way there was at least some money coming in to the family.) Folks used to compete for the afternoon shift because it allowed them time in the morning to tend the livestock and do their other chores.

Obviously ... anyone with a secure full time job these days would be better positioned going into another great depression. Even a crappy low paying job would be better than having no job at all.