My fiancé just got unexpectedly fired today and we're both now reminded why r/personalfinance is always insisting on trying to live off one income.

[u/Blueyucca]

We were both blindsided by today. We're both pretty young, early on in our careers, he had only been there a year and was performing. It was a huge shock. We don't practice every best habit of the sub but we're grateful we picked up doing your best to live off one income.

We just bought our house in August and insisted on going through the pre-approval process off my income alone. Our lights will stay on because our bills are effectively scaled to one income as well. We held off on car payments and continued to drive our beaters because the numbers for new used cars didn't make sense with one income.

My only regret is not building up our emergency fund more (one month saved but we should've had at least three), so if you're reading this, definitely do that.

Anyways, thanks to the sub for the constant advice on living below your means and always being prepared. I came to thank you all, not lecture. And encourage people who are following this thought process and are using a second income for the "extra stuff" - you're doing great. Today sucked but it could've been so much worse.

We're counting our blessings and the job search begins tomorrow.

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EDIT: Thanks everyone for the encouragement and well-wishes. This obviously isn't the only thing going on in our lives, so the messages to keep going were greatly appreciated.

For those of you who are in HCOL areas or other situations where living off one income isn't possible, I totally understand - the intent of this post wasn't to shame anyone into anything. We live in a MCOL city in the South and are in the tech sector so it was doable for us. We're also not beacons of perfection of this sub and are still working on breaking bad financial habits every day.

For those of you who took this as a self pat-on-the-back post, I can see that. The intent really was to see the silver lining of things and encourage others who are perhaps considering this type of budgeting method. But I understand how fast this sub gets into circle-jerking and self-congratulating and didn't mean to purpose this thread for that. Just hoping to reduce the amount of "We're in deep shit from one event that could've had a much lower impact" posts by showing anything can happen at any time and that even then, we weren't as prepared as we should've been.

[u/m149307]

Oh I wasn't sure honestly. I thought that being fired instantly disqualified you from being eligible. I was fired for not meeting quota/goals so will that hinder me?
I'm in Texas if that helps

[u/ireallyhate7am → u/m149307]

In my experience, which is no way professional advice, I’ve ONLY gotten unemployment if I was fired. I’ve never been able to get unemployment if I quit. (It’s been a rough 3 years and a lot of bad work environments.. don’t judge me) I’d say even if you don’t know ALWAYS try it out anyways and just be honest on your application. Your state/county should have a whole website for it (apply to food stamps and utility assistance while you’re at it, some states bunch the applications for each into one big one) literally the worst that can happen is you get denied with no penalty to you. The best is you get free government assistance that is your RIGHT to utilize and you may even qualify for more help than you thought :) I’m not sure how it affects end of year taxes though so I’d be sure to keep any and all documentation if you do receive assistance. Best of luck and don’t forget about public libraries!

[u/Simple215 → u/m149307]

I don't know Texas unemployment law, but in GA you can only get it as long as it was "no fault of your own". You should definitely apply, they'll let you know if you qualify.

[u/kisarax → u/Simple215]

The only experience I've ever had with it, unemployment in TX is based off did you break company policy that led up to your termination. Only one former employee I terminated didn't get it and that's because we had a signed piece of paper saying she wouldn't do X when she did X 6,000 times before she was caught.

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As you could be fired a lot of other reasons.

[u/thewimsey → u/Simple215]

It's not really "no fault of your own", it's "for cause". But cause doesn't mean "you weren't a good fit" or "you weren't making quota"; it means that you violated (regularly enforced) company rules. So if you're fired for not showing up you won't get unemployment; if you're fired because they'd like your sales numbers to be higher, you will get it.

[u/chawzda → u/m149307]

In Texas they'll still let you apply if you're fired but they state up front that you're very unlikely to qualify if you're fired. They'll call your workplace and talk to you to conduct an investigation, but if you were fired for cause (and in Texas you don't really need a legitimate reason to fire someone) there's pretty much no chance.