What If You Lose Your Job

Recently I almost lose my job. It is cause by some misunderstanding. Luckily the misunderstanding got resolved and I manage to retain my job now. I am not here to talk about what is causing that misunderstanding. But I wanted to talk about what is my backup plan if I were to really lose my job.

When I got the news that I will lose my job, the first thing that I can think of is, how am I going to pay my bills, daily expenses, house loan, insurans etc. Luckily from time to time, I had save some money for emergency purpose. I calculated that I can live without a job for at least 6 months. That made me feel relief a bit. Other than some money in my saving account, I have some money in the stock market and unit trust.

I also have some money in my house loan account. For you information my house loan account is the kind of flexible loan payment account. Whenever I pay more, the extra money will be used to reduce my loan principal outstanding. This will reduce the loan interest. But I can still withdraw that extra money out anytime if I need it. I thought this is a very good feature. Every months I will pay extra money to the loan account. I aim to settle the house in less than 5 years. So up to now, I have some decent amount of money in the account. It can be used as my backup emergency funds. At the same time it helps to reduce the interest on my housing loan.

Back to the main topic, I seriously think that we should have some backup funds for emergency purpose. Nowadays Most of people’s financial situation doesn’t even allow them to live for 1 single month if they lose their job. You may think this is not necessary, but wait till you get hit. Then you will know how tough it is. I would say we should have some emergency fund that allow us to live for at least 6 months if we lose our main income.