Tuesday, March 10, 2009

The Economy


I think the economy is on everyone's mind lately, is it not? Since January my husband has been laid off from what use to be the number 3 RAM chip maker in the world, Qimonda (formerly Infineon Semiconductor--they still had approximately a 71 percent stake in the company), had to liquidate my husband's 401k plan from that company in order to survive (even though he was promised and signed paperwork for a severance package) and thankfully had my husband start a new job working for Northrop Grumman.

All of these events since January 16th and we are still plugging along.

I really feel bad for the families that either could not or did not liquidate their 401k plans (if they had one) after Qimonda's lay-off and subsequent bankruptsy filing. We were lucky enough to have that money to fall back on, but what if we did not? Honestly we would have been destitute. We could have been kicked out of the home we rent and all utilities would have been shut off (if we even had a place to live). There was a really good possibilty we would have been homeless. That is a truly scary thought.

While I am not happy that Qimonda did not keep their promise to pay my husband his almost $10 thousand severance, I am not dwelling on that fact because we had that 401k to fall back on. I wish we did not have to use it, but hey; it was either survive or make our kids suffer. They were already worry enough. We could really use that severance. As it is the Federal government is going to sock us with a nice tax bill next year for using the 401k, but hey, I will deal with that when it is time.

Better news: I keep finding ways to save us money and hopefully these will help you too.


This morning on NBC's Today Show they discussed how mom's are taking advantage of all the ways we can save money and how blogging and discussing products (even getting them for free in some cases) helps these companies with advertising and when they make money, we benefit.

There is a site (I went and I think everyone is bombarding currently because it was down) called Consumer Queen and Spark Plugging that I will be visiting today.

Don't forget, shope Ebay, Freecycle and if I come across any other sites I will let you know.



Have a great Tuesday!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is a belated post but I will go check them out. Should be not as busy by now! If you would like to exchange links, I have a work at home site, http://www.Mommysbizathome.com and I can add you to my resources page under work at home blogs if you could add my blog http://www.mommysbizathome.blogspot.com to yours. Just let me know!

TaderDoodles said...

Oh my goodness... my hubby was part of that Layoff in richmond... he was two weeks shy of being an actual employee for the lawsuit (he was an independent contractor until last sept)

I hope you and your family are doing okay.
Prayers,
Lisa