Nigro - No job? No prob!: how to pay your bills, feed your mind, and have a blast when youre out of work

The trouble with unemployment is that the minute you wake up in the morning, youre on the job.

Slappy White, comedian

I f youve already taken care of the laborious jobless minutiaeapplying for unemployment benefits, resolving severance issues, and so onthen by all means leap ahead in the book to the sunny side of the street. The heart and soul of the pages to follow are all about converting unemployment lemons into refreshing and enjoyable lemonade. In other words, in addition to searching for another line of work, you can savor a full glass of fun and frolic as well. If, on the other hand, you need an unemployment roadmap, weve got that too.

So, if you need a little assistance in getting your jobless ducks in a row, start by submitting a claim for unemployment insurance. Granted, not everyone qualifies for these state-administered benefits, but if youve been fired, laid off, downsized, outsourcedor whatever particular euphemism applies to your involuntary loss of a paying jobyou more than likely meet the criteria for unemployment compensation.

However, keep in mind that not everyone is created equal in the eyes of this bureaucratic lifeline. In other words, the generosity or lack thereof of jobless benefits varies from state to state. In addition, the paycheck that you will ultimately receiveif, of course, you meet your states myriad eligibility requirementsis effectively linked to what youve most recently earned in paying jobs throughout the past year. This is known as the base period in unemployment jargon.

So, to put unemployment compensation into a broader perspective: If you were taking home $450 a week and your neighbor, who just lost her job, pulled down $1,200 a week, its a safe bet that the size of your two unemployment checks would differ. In fact, your check would more than likely be a Mini Me version of your neighbors. But there are rather low ceilings on the upper limits of jobless benefits paid out, regardless of where you live. Each of the fifty states has a maximum figure threshold for its unemployment compensation. And lets just say that some of these maximum numbers are rather minimum. In other words, even if you were making $2,000 a week and apply for an unemployment check, theres only so much you can get.

Now, before we venture any further in this subject matter, its time to disabuse those of you who have never before waded into unemployment insurance waters. Your jobless benefits will not equalor even come reasonably closeto what you earned on a weekly basis in your last job, or the weekly average of the multiple jobs you have held in the past year. Its just not how the system works. As previously indicated, the individual states have ceilings on the top dollar amount that you can receiveand they vary considerably. Depending on where you call home, as well as your past income numbers, it is not unusual to see unemployment benefits tally up to approximately half of your recent earnings.

With this necessary disclaimer out of the way, it is nevertheless a fact of life that unemployment checks are big really big for most recipients of them. Very often receipt of jobless benefits is the difference between you subsisting on a daily repast of no-frills canned soups and hamburger helper versus eating the occasional piece of chicken and Dunkin Donuts for dessertnot to mention being able to pay your utility bills, the monthly car payment, and, of course, the rent or mortgage. So, while an unemployment check is notby any stretch of the imaginationcomparable to a full-time job paycheck, its often substantial in light of your out-of-work financial straits. When your income is at ground zero, jobless benefitsat whatever levelare very welcome indeed.